Tag: nature

Scattered

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maplekeys2016

oregongrape

The light beats upon me.
I am startled—
a split leaf crackles on the paved floor—
I am anguished—defeated.

A slight wind shakes the seed-pods—
my thoughts are spent
as the black seeds.
My thoughts tear me,
I dread their fever.
I am scattered in its whirl.
I am scattered like
the hot shrivelled seeds.

The shrivelled seeds
are spilt on the path—
the grass bends with dust,
the grape slips
under its crackled leaf:
yet far beyond the spent seed-pods,
and the blackened stalks of mint,
the poplar is bright on the hill,
the poplar spreads out,
deep-rooted among trees.

O poplar, you are great
among the hill-stones,
while I perish on the path
among the crevices of the rocks.
~Hilda Doolittle “Mid-Day”

vetch

If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?
—G.K. Chesterton

mayrose516

We are mere seeds lying dormant, plain and simple, with nothing to distinguish us one from the other until the murmurs of spring begin, so soft, so subtle.  The soil shakes loose frosty crust as the thawing warmth begins.   Sunlight makes life stir and swell, no longer frozen but animate and intimate.

We wake from our quiescence to sprout, bloom and fruit.  We reach as far as our tethered roots will allow, beyond earthly bounds to touch the light and be touched.

There is renewed hope seeded in the heart of man, ready and waiting to unfurl, with a precious fragrance that lingers, long after the petal has dried, loosened, and fallen to freedom.

poplarsunset

A Slug Solace

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sluggy

“Girls are like slugs—they probably serve some purpose, but it’s hard to imagine what.”
― Bill Watterson, in Calvin and Hobbes

slugdandy

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Slugs appear out of the ground after a drizzle like seeds that plump and germinate miraculously overnight. The slug crop burgeons, and with it, oozy trails of glistening slug slime.

We live on a hill, which means I need to walk downhill to the barn for chores.  On one particular day, the path can include a slug (or three) under each foot. That produces a certain memorable squish factor.

I’ve learned to don my rubber boots and just squash and slide. There will undoubtedly be more slugs to replace the flattened lost, like watching freeze-dried shrinky dinks spontaneously rehydrate.

The trip to the barn for chores becomes a hazardous journey, slipping and sliding on hordes of slugs that have surfaced everywhere like pimples on a teenager’s back. They crawl out from under every leaf and every stray piece of wood to bask in the morning dew, replenishing the moisture lost over weeks of hot sun. Somehow I always suspected there was a secret world of organisms out there, oozing and creeping in the dark of the night, but preferred not to think about them if I didn’t have to. But they would confront me regularly to remind me of their existence and my own.

At dawn, the cat food bowl sometimes contained clues that parties were being thrown at midnight by the back porch, with glistening slime trails in and out of the bowl and in concentric circles all around. When I would grab a handful of green beans in the garden, some of them would be slippery with slug slime and neat little chunks would be missing. The tidiest stealth invasion was a tomato that looked invitingly red and plump from one side, but when picked, was completely cored, hanging in a dangling half shell from the vine with mucus strands still dripping. There was some serious eating going on right under our noses.

Actually the chewing is under the slug noses, all four noses to be precise. With that much sensory input, no wonder a slug knows about the transparent apple peelings lying on the bottom of my tall compost bucket outside the back door. I think they traveled for miles to find this particular stash, climbing up the bucket sides and slithering down into glorious apple orgy. The party lasted until morning when I discovered them still congregating and clinging, gorged and immobile in their satiety on the sides and bottom of the bucket. I had unwittingly provided the means of their intoxication, having now become an accessory to minors in possession.

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In my more tolerant older middle years, I now appreciate slugs for what they are. No longer do I run for the salt shaker as I did in my younger, more ruthless days. Instead I find it strangely reassuring that a land locked amorphous invertebrate can survive weeks of summer heat, weeks of no rain and still thrive to replenish its kind. If something so homely and seemingly inconsequential to the world can make it in spite of conditions that conspire to dry it to dust, then maybe I have a chance as well. I too may not be presentable at times, and sometimes leave behind evidence of where I’ve been and the havoc I’ve created. But then someone puts out a sweet meal for me to feast on, allowing me a celebration of life, and spares me when what I deserve is the salt shaker.

It is solace indeed: if the slugs are loved, than so am I.

slugfest

slugcanoodle

 

To Be Bound with Tiny Rings

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sweeterpeas

tendril

Here are sweet-peas, on tip-toe for a flight:
With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.
~John Keats

sweetpeas15

I grew up watching sweet peas climb a trellis in our family garden. Their delicate tendrils did wrap clinging fingers around anything they could reach and grasp. The blossoms were too ephemeral to waste indoors for a vase on the table — the petals would droop and then drop within a day or so. They were meant to be appreciated right where they grew, so I would visit them regularly, breathe deeply in their midst to capture and keep their lovely scent with me as I went on about my day, leaving them waving their vines in my wake.

Some things are better left undisturbed, to flourish right where they have taken hold. In the case of sweet peas, if I had stood beside them long enough, the finger-like tendrils would have reached out and grasped me as well, climbing up my frame and wrapping their blooming fragrance around me, truly changing me forever.

And so it will be in heaven someday: we will be grasped and clung to with the sweet scent of everlasting love, never to be let go, and never again to be what we once were.

sweeterpeas

The Universe in a Droplet

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kaledrops

And when the Sun comes out,
After this Rain shall stop,
A wondrous Light will fill
Each dark, round drop…
~William Henry Davies from “The Rain”

kaledrops3

I wouldn’t mind mud in August, just once, to see what is brown become lush and green overnight.

How sweet it would be to see copious tears spilling unchecked from a shrouded heaven.

Instead I must settle for one morning of northwest drizzle. An emerging sun illuminates these perfect round spheres with wondrous light as they roll off leaves and petals to huddle puddled together in community on the ground, only to evaporate by mid-day.

However, the wait for rain is never too long in this land of mush and mud ten months out of the year.

Rain will come sooner than I can imagine; soon again I will see a glistening crystalline reflection of the universe in a droplet.

The Living Water is always undimmed, its taste ambrosial.

kaledrop

Sun and Wind Muscle

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sunset626163

poplarwind

There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.
~Annie Dillard

sunset76162

thistleseeds

I tend to think of the wind, not the sun, having all the weather muscle, especially in the midst of a brisk northeaster blow in the dead of winter, far outperforming the meager and anemic sunlight.  Memories of northeast blizzard muscle are still fresh in my mind, even in the first half of August.

But earlier this week, on a warm summer day,  it was both sun and wind competing with their mustered energy.  With all the house windows kept wide open to keep things cool there were frequent door-slamming, blinds-beating, leaf-loosening, windchime-clattering, hay-drying gusts.  Muscle was all around and through us.

There was enough sun to create a shadow tree blending like a holograph projected onto the woods.  There was enough wind to shake the grasses and thistles and scatter their seed.  There was enough sun to dip the evening with orange smoothie and enough wind to clear the haze from the air.

For now there is plenty of energy to spare: spirit-filled muscle to pick me up, bend me over, warm my heart, all bottled and ready to release on that inevitable wintry day that will come,  sooner than I want.

shadow of the lone fir cast upon the woods at sunset

sunset626162

Peace Blooms

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giantcedars6

giantcedarsmoss

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly…

Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
~Maya Angelou from “When Great Trees Fall”

woods14

woods29

When I need to be restored,
humbled and forgiven,
I walk back to the woods
to stand before the great beings
cut down in their prime
over one hundred years ago,
their scarred stumps still bearing the notches
from the lumbermen’s springboards.

Old growth firs and cedars
became mere headstones
in the graveyard left behind.

They existed, they existed,
their grandeur leaves no doubt.
I leave the woods and come back
to the world better
because they existed.

 

giantcedars

giantcedars5

To Return Seems Like a Sacrament

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image

There are landscapes one can own,
bright rooms which look out to the sea,
tall houses where beyond the window
day after day the same dark river
turns slowly through the hills, and there
are homesteads perched on mountaintops
whose cool white caps outlast the spring.

And there are other places which,
although we did not stay for long,
stick in the mind and call us back—
a valley visited one spring
where walking through an apple orchard
we breathed its blossoms with the air.
Return seems like a sacrament.

Then there are landscapes one has lost—
the brown hills circling a wide bay
I watched each afternoon one summer
talking to friends who now are dead.
I like to think I could go back again
and stand out on the balcony,
dizzy with a sense of déjà vu.

But coming up these steps to you
at just that moment when the moon,
magnificently full and bright
behind the lattice-work of clouds,
seems almost set upon the rooftops
it illuminates, how shall I
ever summon it again?
~Dana Giola “Places to Return”

image

A week away, experiencing new landscapes, seeing orcas and humpbacks and bears (oh my!) – this is the stuff of stories and memories.

Yet nothing about vacation compares to the sacrament of the moment of return, pulling into our own driveway, and settling back into the routine of home where the men are strong, the women are (ahem) good looking and the children are above average.

There’s no better place to summon up the sacrament of remembrance.

moon221163

 

Propping up the Darkness

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sunset67166

sunset626164

Sometimes on summer evenings I step
Out of my house to look at trees
Propping darkness up to the silence.
~Paul Zimmer from “A Final Affection”

 

sunset714161

We spent 16 hours yesterday on a ferry going up the inside passage on the British Columbia coastal islands, witnessing whale spouts and splashes.  The backdrop consisted of millions of trees in pristine wilderness propping up the sky, the clouds, and the silence we disturbed.

Anywhere I go, I look to the trees and feel immediately among old friends.

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The Slowest Beauty

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flamingobutterfly

birdofparadisebutterfly

As though I were nowhere around, the porcupine
              shuffles the edge of the road,
              in five minutes crosses
                            a distance I could have covered
                            in less than one

And disappears at last into cattails
              and rushes, sunset, a vespers
              of waterbirds, leaving me
                            still unwilling to move.

I am a sucker for scenes like this.
              The slowest beauty can rush me.
              And here I am,
                            all of my defenses down.
~Ingrid Wendt from “Porcupine at Dusk”

 

tropicalflower

butterfly1

A walk through enclosed tropical gardens
to witness the slow beauty of wading flamingos,
koi moving between their legs,
a lazy mist over exotic flowers,
butterflies testing their fragile wings.

I am overwhelmed,
my defenses down
over the rush of my life
outside this bubble.

Going back through the double doors,
re-entering the gray and cool of the northwest,
the bubble burst
and I’m released in a flutter of wings.

closeowleye

 

 

Your Unfolding Life

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sunflowerjuy

begoniawlc

pnp168

Beauty is about more rounded substantial becoming,
….an emerging fullness,
a greater sense of grace and elegance,
a deeper sense of depth,
and also a kind of homecoming
for the enriched memory of your unfolding life.
~John O’Donohue from an “On Being” interview

 

cornflower2016

Whenever we wander from home,
witnessing beauty in far flung places,
I find I yearn even more for the homecoming
of memories unfolding
from where they are so neatly stored,
so deep and so wide, so full and filling.

seeds

dahlialinda

petuniajuly