Tag: Light

Yielding to Change

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I went out to cut a last batch of zinnias this
morning from the back fencerow and got my shanks
chilled for sure: furrowy dark gray clouds with
separating fringes of blue sky-grass: and the dew

beaded up heavier than the left-overs of the rain:
in the zinnias, in each of two, a bumblebee 
stirring in slow motion. Trying to unwind
the webbed drug of cold, buzzing occasionally but

with a dry rattle: bees die with the burnt honey 
at their mouths, at least: the fact’s established:
it is not summer now and the simmering buzz is out of 
heat: the zucchini blossoms falling show squash

overgreen with stunted growth: the snapdragons have
suckered down into a blossom or so: we passed
into dark last week the even mark of day and night
and what we hoped would stay we yield to change.
~A.R. Ammons  “Equinox”

We yield now
to the heaviness of the change;
a slowing of our walk
and the darkening of our days.

It is time:
day and night compete,
and neither wins.

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Almost Forgot

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   I almost forgot
To hang up an autumn moon
      Over the mountain
~Richard Wright “Haiku”

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
       Ceaseless, insistent. 
  
The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence
Under a moon waning and worn, broken,      
Tired with summer.   

Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,
Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,      
Snow-hushed and heavy.   

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction,
While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest,
As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,      
Lest they forget them.
~Sara Teasdale, “September Midnight”

photo by Josh Scholten

I will not forget, dear harvest moon,
to tuck you away where I can find you months from now,
tangled up in the weary trees of autumn.
Once the leaves fall, modest branches will be illuminated
in their embarrassed nakedness.

When I too need your warm light
on some cold dark night,
I’ll know exactly where to find you
because I’ve memorized your round face
and where you are waiting for me.
I’ll not forget because you never forget.

This book of beauty in words and photography is available to order here:

The Fallen Works of Light

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The summer ends, and it is time
To face another way. Our theme
Reversed, we harvest the last row
To store against the cold, undo
The garden that will be undone.
We grieve under the weakened sun
To see all earth’s green fountains dried,
And fallen all the works of light.
You do not speak, and I regret
This downfall of the good we sought
As though the fault were mine. I bring
The plow to turn the shattering
Leaves and bent stems into the dark,
From which they may return. At work,
I see you leaving our bright land,
The last cut flowers in your hand.
~Wendell Berry “The Summer Ends” from A Timbered Choir.

I want to memorize it all before it changes
as the light weakens from
the sun shifting from north to south,
balancing on the fulcrum of our country road at equinox.

The dying back of the garden leaves and vines reveals
what lies unharvested beneath,
so I gather in urgency, not wanting it to go to waste.

We part again from you, Summer –
your gifts seemed endless
until you ended –
a reminder that someday, so must I.

I sit silenced and brooding, waiting for what comes next.

A book of beautiful words and photography, available to order here:

Unanswerable Questions

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Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.
~Carl Sandburg, “Under the Harvest Moon”

As we enter the season
of all that is lush and lovely
which starts to wither and decay before our eyes,
we know the flowers and trees aren’t alone.
Death, whispering within its gray night’s cloak,
has been stealing the young and old since time began,
but never as boldly as during a pandemic.
Millions of family members are left
with nothing but bittersweet memories
of their loved ones now buried deep.

The harvest moon – not nearly bright enough,
as a poor reflection of the sun –
mocks us who covet light
during a rampage of contagious illness and death.

As we endure the searing beauty of yet another dying season,
let us treasure those we protect through our care and concern.
Let us cherish the memories of those we’ve lost.
There can be only one answer to the unanswerable questions:
Love itself died to become Salvation,
an ever-sufficient Light that leads us home.

A book of beauty in words and photos is available to order here:


	


				
	






	
	

		
Generous Indefatigable Love
	


	
					

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And what if I never get it right,
this loving, this giving of the self
to the other? And what if I die

before learning how to offer
my everything? What if, though
I say I want this generous,

indefatigable love, what if
I forever find a way to hold
some corner back? I don’t want

to find out the answer
to that. I want to be the sun
that gives and gives until it burns out,

the sea that kisses the shore
and only moves away so that
it might rush up to kiss it again.
~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “And Again” from Hush




















The beach at Tohoku, Japan where the tsunami hit in 2011















What is it about us 
that always holds something back 
when loving others, 
keeping in reserve 
some little piece of ourselves 
that we can’t quite let go? 





Even so, we ourselves want to be loved 
wholly, fully, completely, unconditionally 
yet something in us doesn’t trust 
it could be true – 
we know how undeserving we are. 

When we are offered such
generous indefatigable love, 
we hold back part of ourselves 
because we are afraid
we’ll be left desolate, never to be filled again – 
a sun burned out and darkened, 
a shore left high and dry.





Once we experience our Creator’s love 
as wholly generous, 
completely tireless and persistent, 
unconditionally grace-filled,
we can stop fearing our emptiness.

He pours more than enough love into us
without holding back,
filling us so full that we might spill over to others,
again and again and again,
with our light and heart and spirit unbound.






































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When the Trivial is Transformed
	


	
					

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Man Scything Hay by Todd Reifers























A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing, 
a weather-vane, 
a wind-mill, 
a winnowing flail, 
the dust in the barn door; 
a moment,- -and the thing has vanished, 
because it was pure effect; 
but it leaves a relish behind it, 
a longing that the accident may happen again.
~Walter Pater from his essay “The Renaissance”




















The accident of light does happen, again and again, but when I least expect it.  If I’m not ready for it, in a blink, it can be gone.





Yet in that moment, everything is changed and transformed forever.  The thing itself, trivial and transient becomes something other, merely because of how it is illuminated.





So am I, trivial and transient, lit from outside myself with a light that ignites me within. I’m transfigured by a love and sacrifice unexpected and undeserved.





Am I ready to be changed?



































A book of beautiful words and photos, available for order here:






	


				
	






	
	

		
Neither Before Nor After
	


	
					

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When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not





and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks that lean
over their broken
shadows across the cracked ground





but they all know
that you have come
the seed heads of the sage
the whispering birds
with nowhere to hide you
to keep you for later





you
who fly with them





you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with blue plums
that have fallen through the night





perfect in the dew
~W.S. Merwin “To the Light of September”



































The light of September is a filtered, more gentle illumination than we have experienced for the past several months of high summer glare.  





Now the light is lambent: a soft radiance that simply glows at certain times of the day when the angle of the sun is just right, and the clouds are in position to soften and cushion the luminence.

It is also liminal: it is neither before or after, on the threshold between seasons when there is both promise and caution in the air.





Sometimes I think I can breathe in light like this, if not through my lungs, then through my eyes. It is a temptation to bottle it up with a stopper somehow, stow it away hidden in a back cupboard. Then I can bring it out, pour a bit into a glass on the darkest days and imbibe.

But for now, I fill myself full to the brim. And my only means of preservation is with a camera and a few words. 

So I share it now with all of you to tuck away for a future day when you too are hungry for lambent light.  Just check out “September.”























































More photos and words of light from Barnstorming available to order here:






	


				
	






	
	

		
Tomorrows Less Long
	


	
					

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Let me enjoy 
this late-summer day of my heart 
while the leaves are still green 
and I won’t look so close 
as to see that first tint 
of pale yellow slowly creep in. 
I will cease endless running 
and then look to the sky 
ask the sun to embrace me 
and then hope she won’t tell 
of tomorrows less long than today. 
Let me spend just this time 
in the slow-cooling glow 
of warm afternoon light 
and I’d think 
I will still have the strength 
for just one more 
last fling of my heart.
– Jonathan Bohrn, Late August



































August rushes by like desert rainfall,
A flood of frenzied upheaval,
Expected,
But still catching me unprepared.
Like a match flame
Bursting on the scene,
Heat and haze of crimson sunsets.
Like a dream
Of moon and dark barely recalled,
A moment,
Shadows caught in a blink.
Like a quick kiss;
One wishes for more
But it suddenly turns to leave,
Dragging summer away.
–  Elizabeth Maua Taylor, August  

























I’m in the time of life when what is to come is ever so much shorter than what has been. I muse now at my sudden revelation as a five year old that a time would come when I would cease to be on this earth.  I had no idea how soon that would come or whether I would have many years to think about how I might come to an end. That knowledge has colored all my days, knowing they are numbered and finite. 





Now, like the drying leaves, I watch my edges curling and changing color in preparation – a kind of beauty preceding an eventual letting go.

I remember thinking, in my kindergarten-size brain, that I could not waste a minute of this life and needed to pay attention to everything. That has been much harder than I imagined: there is pain in attending to wars and famine, illness and injury, tragedy and tribulation. I was given my ears to hear, my eyes to see, my mouth to speak – for good reason. Though my heart hurts to read headlines, I must fling it into the messiness around me.





Even the leaves bleed red as tomorrow is less long.





It is the waning light and shortening days that colors my view like smoky haze in the sky painting a sunset deep orange.  The coming darkness is temporary and, like me, is inevitably finite; it will never conquer the light that is everlasting.



































More Barnstorming photography and poetry from Lois Edstrom can be ordered in this book available here:











	


				
	






	
	

		
Wired With Alertness
	


	
					

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Edmund Darch Lewis – Susquehanna





Agnes Wallace by Robert Sivell





I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure — if it is a pleasure —
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one —
a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table —
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia,

when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandana

sitting in a small, green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame. 
~Billy Collins Fishing On The Susquehanna In July










A Hare in the Forest by Hans Hoffman (Getty Museum)





Susquehanna by Jasper Francis Cropsey





Hayfield–oil painting by Scott Prior http://www.scottpriorart.com




















I live a quiet life in a quiet place. There are many experiences not on my bucket list that I’m content to simply imagine.





I’m not a rock climber or a zip liner or willing to jump out of an airplane. I won’t ride a horse over a four foot jump or race one around a track. Not for me waterskis or unicycles or motorcycles.





I’m grateful there are those who are eagerly wired with alertness for the next experience: adventurers who seek out the extremes of life so the rest of us can sit back and admire their courage and applaud their explorations and achievement.





My mind’s eye and imagination is powerful enough, thanks to the words and pictures of others. I find I’m content to explore the corners of my quiet places, both inside and outside, to see what I can build from what I find right here under my nose.





When the light is right, and I’m open enough to it, what I see is ready to spring right out of the frame.






























The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur—





….and August the most peaceful month.





To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;





You become a self that fills the four corners of
night.
~Wallace Stevens, from “A Rabbit As King of the Ghosts”

























More of my images along with Lois Edstrom’s ekphrastic poetry can be found in this book, available for order here:











	


				
	






	
	

		
An Exquisite View
	


	
					

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How often do we miss the fainter note
Or fail to see the more exquisite hue,
Blind to the tiny streamlet at our feet,
Eyes fixed upon some other, further view.
What chimes of harmonies escape our ears,
How many rainbows must elude our sight,
We see a field but do not see the grass,
Each blade a miracle of shade and light.
How then to keep the greater end in eye
And watch the sunlight on the distant peak,
And yet not tread on any leaf of love,
Nor miss a word the eager children speak?
Ah, what demand upon the narrow heart,
To seek the whole, yet not ignore the part.
~Philip Britts  “Sonnet 1”






























I saw the lovely arch
    Of Rainbow span the sky,
The gold sun burning
    As the rain swept by.





In bright-ringed solitude
    The showery foliage shone
One lovely moment,
    And the Bow was gone.
~Walter De La Mare “The Rainbow”



































We are born nearly blinded, focused solely on our emptiness – a hunger to be filled and our need to be held.  As we grow, our focus sharpens to fall in love with those who feed and nurture us. 





Eventually we discover, challenge and worship He who made us.





This world is often too much for us to take in as a whole — our exquisite view of shadow and light, color and gray, loneliness and embrace, sorrow and joy.





With more years and a broader vision, we scan for the finer details within the whole before it disappears with the changing light.  Time’s a wasting (and so are we) as we try to capture it all with the lenses of our eyes and hearts.





The end of life comes too soon, when once again our vision blurs and the world fades away from view. 





We hunger yet again to be filled and held.





And then heaven itself will seem almost too much to take in – our hearts full to bursting with light and promise for the rest of eternity.



































A new book is available from Barnstorming – maybe you know someone who would enjoy a gift of light and color and insightful words? Order here: