One taste
and the rest
is what came after.
Little berry,
you’re the flavor
of my best,
most necessary
kiss. Fit
for a tongue tip,
exactly.
You were nothing
until I picked
you once.
How long
do we willingly
live without?
How hungry
would I be if
I’d kept walking?
~Kathleen Flenniken (2012 – 2014 Washington State poet laureate)
I’m glad I stopped
where I was going
what I was doing
to admire and taste
a moment
never to come again~
So sweet
yet so sad
In the darkness something was happening at last.
A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and…. hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself.
There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it.
The earth was of many colors: they were fresh, hot, and vivid. They made you feel excited; until you saw the Singer himself, and then you forgot everything else.
~C.S. Lewis from The Magician’s Nephew
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
~Raymond Carver “Late Fragment”
Beautiful things and varied shapes appeal to [the eyes],
vivid and well-matched colors attract;
but let not these captivate my soul.
Rather let God ravish it;
he made these things exceedingly good, to be sure,
but he is my good, not they.
~St. Augustine
All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.
~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Every time I open my eyes
and listen for the voice of the morning,
I am reminded how precious is this moment,
how intense is each breath and each heartbeat.
We are created for this.
We are, everyone of us, beloved.
We are meant to wonder breathless at this,
without ceasing.
There are some people who write haiku poetry to make a living.
You know what I think?
We should make our living become haiku poetry.
You might toil in a clattering factory
or on a tossing fishing boat
or be battling to make a living in a dingy shop.
There are people who have written inspiring haiku poems in such unpoetic situations.
And we, if we really want to,
can make any occupation,
and twenty-four hours of each day,
into a poem.
Of course, first we have to create a heart
that is both serious and light!
We have to gaze below the surface of things,
search out the hidden beauty that is everywhere
and discover the glorious things all around us.
Then each day becomes a haiku poem.
~Dr. Takashi Nagai, survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bomb
closed my eyelids to
finality of sunlight’s
reach, and glowed within
We must go up into the chase in the evenings,
and pray there with nothing but God’s cloud temple between us and His heaven!
And His choir of small birds and night crickets and booming beetles,
and all happy things who praise Him all night long!
And in the still summer noon, too,
with the lazy-paced clouds above,
and the distant sheep-bell,
and the bee humming in the beds of thyme,
and one bird making the hollies ring a moment,
and then all still – hushed – awe-bound,
as the great thunderclouds slide up from the far south!
Then, there to praise God!
~Charles Kingsley
Heaven and earth are only three feet apart,
but in the thin places that distance is even smaller.
A thin place is where the veil that separates heaven and earth is lifted
and one is able to receive a glimpse of the glory of God.
~Celtic saying
Oh, the floating clouds and the thoughts of a wanderer!
Oh, the sunset and the longing of an old friend!
We ride away from each other, waving our hands,
While our horses neigh softly, softly . . . .
~Li Po from “Taking Leave of a Friend”
An evening of subtle softness in the sunset clouds~
just enough illumination to imagine
heaven must be just beyond.
A stone’s throw from an abandoned homestead foundation leans
an ancient cherry tree, bent by countless storms,
its northern half bare,
from the southern half
dangles clusters of sweet century old promises.
Once orchard lifeblood of this farm,
its fruit picked for farmers’ market
an early dawn hour’s wagon ride to town;
now broken down, forgotten
until this week of fruitful surrender.
Already, but not yet finished,
roots still reaching deep for one more season;
a faithful cycle blooming forth
with budding life from gnarled knots
to yield glorious from weary dying branches.
Hundreds of glistening amber globes of rosy sheen
cling clustered on crooked lichened limbs,
to be gathered up heaping into bowls of gold,
awaiting ecstatic burst of savored perfection,
fulfilling an old promise of sweet abandon.
Light and wind are running
over the headed grass
as though the hill had
melted and now flowed.
~Wendell Berry “June Wind”
It will soon be haying time, as soon as another stretch of clear days appears on the horizon. We missed a haying window last week, and now are staring at 10 days of forecast rain and clouds.
The headed grass is growing heavier, falling over, lodged before it can be cut, with the undulations of moist breezes flowing over the hill. It has matured too fast, rising up too lush, too overcome with itself so that it can no longer stand. It is melting, pulled back to the soil. We must work fast to save it.
The light and wind works its magic on our hill. The blades of the mower will come soon to lay it to the ground in green streams that flow up and down the slopes. It will lie comfortless in its stoneless cemetery rows, until tossed about by the tedder into random piles to dry, then raked back into a semblance of order in mounded lines flowing over the landscape.
It will be crushed and bound together for transport to the barn, no longer bending but bent, no longer flowing but flown, no longer growing but grown and salvaged.
It becomes fodder for the beasts of the farm during the cold nights when the wind beats at the doors. It melts in their mouths, as it was meant to, as we are meant to melt and flow.
Truly.
Little flower,
but if I could understand what you are,
root and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
~ Tennyson
Am I root, or am I bud?
Am I stem or am I leaf?
All in all, this is not me
but the merest image
of God’s fruiting glory.
I am but the tears shed
as He broke
into blossom.
I never met a man who was shaken by a field of identical blades of grass. An acre of poppies and a forest of spruce boggle no one’s mind. Even ten square miles of wheat gladdens the hearts of most.
No, in the plant world, and especially among the flowering plants, fecundity is not an assault on human values. Plants are not our competitors; they are our prey and our nesting materials.
Fecundity is anathema only in the animal.
“Acres and acres of rats” has a suitably chilling ring to it that is decidedly lacking if I say, instead, “acres and acres of tulips”.
~Annie Dillard from “The Force That Drives the Flower”
This time of year our farm is brilliantly lit by sun and teeming with fecundity. The cherry orchard blossoms have yielded to fruit and the pastures are knee high with grass. By this time in June, the daylight starts creeping over the eastern foothills at 4 AM and the last glimpse of sun disappears at nearly 10 PM. So many hours of light to work with!
I yearn for a dark rainy day to hide inside with a book. Instead the lawnmower and weed whacker call my name, and the fish pond needs cleaning and the garden must be weeded.
It’s not that things don’t happen on the farm during months like this. It’s just that nothing we do is enough. Blackberry brambles have taken over everything, grass grows faster than we can keep it mowed down, the manure piles spread on the fields in May are growing exponentially again. The fences always need fixing.
The weather has been hot and the hay is ready to cut but no string of days has been available for harvest – we are low on the priority list of the local dairy man who cuts and bales our hay. We no longer breed our Haflinger horses, so we are feeding and caring for a retired herd.
Suddenly our farm dream seems not nearly so compelling.
We have spent many years dreaming about the farm as we hoped it would be. We imagined the pastures managed perfectly with fencing that was both functional and beautiful. Our barns and buildings would be tidy and leak-proof, and the stalls secure and safe. We’d have a really nice pick up truck with low miles on it, not a 35 year old hand me down truck with almost 250,000 miles. We would have trees pruned expertly and we’d have flower beds blooming as well as a vegetable garden yielding 9 months of the year. Our hay would never be rained on. We would have dogs that wouldn’t run off and cats that would take care of all the rodents. We wouldn’t have any moles, thistles, dandelions or buttercup. The pheasant, deer, coyotes, raccoons, and wild rabbits would only stroll through the yard for our amusement and not disturb anything. We’d have livestock with the best bloodlines we could afford and a steady demand from customers to purchase their offspring at reasonable prices so that not a dime of our off-farm income would be necessary to pay farm expenses. Our animals (and we) would never get sick or injured.
And our house would always stay clean.
Dream on. Farms can be back-breaking, morale-eroding, expensive sinkholes. I know ours is. Yet here we be and here we stay.
It’s home. We’ve raised three wonderful children here. We’ve bred and grown good horses and great garden and orchard crops and tons of hay from our own fields. We breathe clean air and daily hear dozens of different bird songs and look out at some of the best scenery this side of heaven. Eagles land in the trees in our front yard. It’s all enough for us even if we are not enough for the farm. I know there will come a time when the farm will need to be a fond memory and not a daily reality. Until then we will keep pursuing our dream as we and the farm grow older. Dreams age and mature and I know now what I dreamed of when I was younger was not the important stuff.
We have been blessed with the abundance of one another, with the sunrises and the sunsets and everything in between. This is the best of fecundity.
You love the roses – so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!
~George Eliot
There was a time when thorns were not part of our world, when we knew nothing of suffering and death, but pursuing and desiring more than we were already generously given, we received more than we bargained for.
We continue to reel under the thorns our choices produce — every day there is more bloodletting.
So a Rose was sent to adorn the thorns. We chose thorns to make Him bleed and still do to this day.
A fragrant rose blooms beautiful,
bleeding amid the thorns,
raining down as we sleep and wake,
and will to the endless day.
Abandon entouré d’abandon, tendresse touchant aux tendresses…
C’est ton intérieur qui sans cesse se caresse, dirait-on;
se caresse en soi-même, par son propre reflet éclairé.
Ainsi tu inventes le thème du Narcisse exaucé.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Dirait-on” from his French Poetry collection ‘Les chansons de la rose’
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”
О Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less;
The eastern light our spires touch at morning,
The light that slants upon our western doors at evening.
The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight,
Moon light and star light, owl and moth light,
Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.
О Light Invisible, we worship Thee!
~T.S. Eliot from “O Light Invisible”
We are given the eyes to see the part in the whole
or not
We are given the ears to hear the note within the chord
or not
We are given voice to rejoice alone or in a chorus
or not
We are given a rain-bowed promise to witness it all
or not.
So why ever not?
Barnstorming 