Tag: seasons

Blurring of the Seasons

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Van Gogh – “Avenue of Plane Trees near Arles Station”

After Van Gogh
Things are growing strange these days,
like Van Gogh’s yellow trees. Oh, do not
be surprised by these yellow immensities,
how out of proportion things in the picture seem.
What you see in a way makes sense:
the enormous, barren trees eclipsing
the unimportant buildings at Arles station,
the people all small, shadow-like, cast
to the side. Perhaps Van Gogh should have
left us out entirely, but then who would
be left to blame for the strange blurring
of the seasons in the forefront, the way
summer bleeds into autumn, the forests
burning deep into the winter, those winters
where the snow piled so high, we were all
nearly buried alive. Soon we’ll vanish,
and no picture will even exist—unless,
unless someone will answer (who will dare
to answer), where in the world is spring?
~Jodi Hollander “Avenue of Plane Trees”

Who might dare to answer: where in the world is spring?
Who can know with any certainty?
Sometimes it feels like time skips forward
and a whole season is left behind.

The signs of the seasons can blur so profoundly, there is no telling whether it is fall or spring without a calendar. Are those trees just leafing out or trying to shed? Is the sunset’s golden glow from October light or April?

I can’t feel the movement of the earth under my feet. It needs to slow its spin on its axis and lengthen its orbital oval trip around the sun so I have more minutes in the day and more weeks in a year.

But, of course, that would make a huge mess of things.

It is as it is.
It is meant to be this way.
Though it may be blurry to me,
it is clear and good and intentional to God.
He dares to answer as only He knows…

AI image created for this post
AI image created for this post

These Precious Days

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Perhaps as a child you had the chicken pox
and your mother, to soothe you in your fever
or to help you fall asleep, came into your room
and read to you from some favorite book,
Charlotte’s Web or Little House on the Prairie,
a long story that she quietly took you through
until your eyes became magnets for your shuttering
lids and she saw your breathing go slow. And then
she read on, this time silently and to herself,
not because she didn’t know the story,
it seemed to her that there had never been a time
when she didn’t know this story—the young girl
and her benevolence, the young girl in her sod house—
but because she did not yet want to leave your side
though she knew there was nothing more
she could do for you. And you, not asleep but simply weak,
listened to her turn the pages, still feeling
the lamp warm against one cheek, knowing the shape
of the rocking chair’s shadow as it slid across
your chest. So that now, these many years later,
when you are clenched in the damp fist of a hospital bed,
or signing the papers that say you won’t love him anymore,
when you are bent at your son’s gravesite or haunted
by a war that makes you wake with the gun
cocked in your hand, you would like to believe
that such generosity comes from God, too,
who now, when you have the strength to ask, might begin
the story again, just as your mother would,
from the place where you have both left off.
~Keetje Kuipers “Prayer” from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

These autumn days will shorten and grow cold.
The leaves will shake loose from the trees and fall.
Christmas will come, then the snows of winter.
You will live to enjoy the beauty of the frozen world,
for you mean a great deal to Zuckerman
and he will not harm you, ever.
Winter will pass, the days will lengthen,
the ice will melt in the pasture pond.
The song sparrow will return and sing,
the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again.
All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy,Wilbur — this lovely world, these precious days …
~E.B. White (Charlotte talking to Wilbur) from Charlotte’s Web

Each passing moment is precious, as time flows relentlessly.

We, on a linear trajectory from birth to death, bear witness to the cycling of the seasons while earth spins and orbits through space.

The story of me, and the story of you, is not yet finished. While our heads nod, our eyelids become heavy, the Author is turning the pages, reading resonant Words that define our days.

We pick up where we left off, wanting to hear the next unknowable chapter. We try to stay awake, eager to see what comes next.

We aren’t quite ready to fall asleep, not yet.
Not yet…

Raking and Piling the Past

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I.
Cats pad from one sun-warmed
stone to another. Bees lament
the sweet ripe fruit

denied by spring’s late hard frost.
Birds stow mating calls
for another season.

Clouds scribble pithy prose,
criss-cross pages surrendered
by autumn’s azure.

Flower beds brown as they thin
and cricket song stitches  
a coverlet against evening chill.

II.
In my first autumn at home
since I was three
I rustle leaves at my feet
like a past I can rake and pile.
Energized by autumn’s aura
I glean clarity
of what lies fallow
and what I’ve put up for my winter.
~Nancy Jentsch “October Afternoon”

Out through the fields and the woods
   And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
   And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
   And lo, it is ended.
 
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
   Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
   And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
   When others are sleeping.
 
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
   No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
   The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
   But the feet question ‘Whither?’
 
Ah, when to the heart of man
   Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
   To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
   Of a love or a season?
~Robert Frost “Reluctance”

As I kick through piles of fallen leaves in the barnyard, I realize how close I am to becoming one of them. Within my own changing seasons, I have flourished and bloomed and fruited, but am now reminded of my fading, withering and eventual letting go.

I find I’m not nearly so bold anymore, instead trembling nervously when harsh winds blow me about, hoping the roots I’ve always depended upon will continue to nourish and sustain me.

This time of year, everything feels transitory — especially me.

When these thoughts overwhelm, I tend to hang on tighter rather than simply giving up and letting go. My feet stumble when I try to do the same tasks I did so smoothly years ago. I’m stubbornly wanting things to stay the same, reluctant for a transition to something different.

My only solace is that the heart of man — indeed my own hole-y heart — is transient compared to the holy Heart of the Creator. I am sustained by His steady Pulse, His ubiquitous Circulation, His impeccable Rhythm of Life and Death.

In that I trust.
In that I come to abandon my stubborn reluctance.

August Ends with a Quick Kiss

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The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes from Songs of Many Seasons 1862-1874

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.
– John 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”

Everything is made to perish;
the wonder of anything at all is that it has not already done so.
No, he thought.
The wonder of anything is that it was made in the first place.
What persists beyond this cataclysm of making and unmaking?
~Paul Harding from Tinkers

Earthly contentment
~perhaps a house stayed dry in a flood
or a forest was passed over in a wildfire
or a devastating diagnosis was averted
or a bank account contained sufficient funds
or gray hairs remain successfully hidden~
won’t last.

Like a quick kiss, it is done and gone, and cannot last.

May I not settle for comfort and contentment
but seek to fill
my overwhelming needs
with what will not perish,
even as the leaves turn yellow
and the light begins to fade,
and rest assured
as the seasons pass, altering the landscape,
I too must be changed.

Keeping It For Later

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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”

Each month has its own special lighting
though this past luminous September tended to sweep them all.

I loosen my grasp on September as we slip into October bronze.

There must be a place I can hide these riches,
tuck this light away for safe-keeping,
to bring it out on the darkest winter day
and feast upon it.

I do know better;
this glow follows the birds as they fly away.
They keep it with them, wherever they go,
towing it back on their wings come spring.

In the meantime I must remember how
this endless summer defined September.

Wrapped in the Shawl of Fading Summer

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Summer begins to have the look
Peruser of enchanting Book
Reluctantly but sure perceives
A gain upon the backward leaves —

Autumn begins to be inferred
By millinery of the cloud,
Or deeper color in the shawl
That wraps the everlasting hill.
~Emily Dickinson in “Summer Begins to Have the Look”

Summer is waning and wistful;
it has the look of packing up,
and moving on
without bidding adieu
or looking back over its shoulder.

I’m just not ready to wave goodbye to sun-soaked clear skies.

Cooling winds have carried in darkening clouds
spread green leaves everywhere,
loosened before their time.
Rain is many weeks overdue
yet there is temptation to bargain
for a little more time.
Though we are in need of a good drenching
there are still onions and potatoes to pull from the ground,
berries to pick before they mold on the vine,
overwhelming buckets of tomatoes,
and the remaining corn cobs bulging.

The overhead overcast is heavily burdened
with clues of what is coming:
earlier dusk,
the feel of moisture,
the deepening graying hues,
the briskness of breezes.

There is no negotiation possible.
I need to steel myself and get ready,
wrapping myself in the soft shawl of inevitability.

So autumn advances with the clouds,
taking up residence where summer has left off.
Though there is still clean up
of the overabundance left behind,
autumn will bring its own unique plans
for display of a delicious palette of hues.

The truth is we’ve seen nothing yet.

Original Barnstorming artwork note cards available as a gift to you with a $50 donation to support Barnstorming – information here

Summer’s Parting Sighs

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From hill and cloud and heaven,
The hues of evening died
Night welled through lane and hollow
And hushed the countryside

So here’s an end of roaming
On eves when autumn nighs:
The ear too fondly listens
For summer’s parting sighs
~A. E. Housman from “When Summer’s End is Nighing”

Whatever season we’re in, I’m content only for a few weeks, then want to move on to the next.

Rather than swelter in stifling summer heat, I yearn for cool autumn breezes and bright colors.

Rather than watch trees stripped bare by those breezes, I dream of white landscapes and cozy evenings spent indoors.

Rather than my fingers aching with cold during chores, my heart aches for fragrant swelling buds and the growing grasses of spring when I no longer need to carry hay bales to the horses.

Then, as spring becomes too fulsome to the point of overwhelm (and my allergies kick in), I circle back to longing for lingering summer sunrises and sunsets with days that seem to last forever.

I’m hopeless, it is true – never quite content with where I am in the here and now, always itching for whatever is coming on the horizon.

Maybe by the time I reach such happily-ever-aftering, I will realize every day, every month, every season was all gift, all grace, all grand and all so very generous. Good things don’t have to end for another to begin; they are to be cherished year round.

A Lonely Unyielding Fir

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A silence slipping around like death,
Yet chased by a whisper, a sigh, a breath,
One group of trees, lean, naked and cold,
Inking their crest ‘gainst a sky green-gold,
One path that knows where the corn flowers were;
Lonely, apart, unyielding, one fir;
And over it softly leaning down,
One star that I loved ere the fields went brown.
~Angelina Weld Grimke “A Winter Twilight”

Some ask for the world
and are diminished
in the receiving
of it. You gave me
only this small pool
that the more I drink
from, the more overflows
me with sourceless light.
~R.S. Thomas  “Gift” from Experimenting with an Amen

I am astonished my thirstiness is
slaked by such simple things as
a moment of pink in the sky,
a burst of birdsong,
a tree standing steadfast on the hill through the seasons,
a glimpse of tomorrow over the fading horizon of today.

Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,

“You owe
Me.”

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.
~Daniel Ladinsky, from “The Gift”

A Puzzling Light

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These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something;

A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light…
~John Ashbery from “Some Trees”

Surrounded as we are by special trees on this farm, I watch them carefully through the seasons.
I hope to learn what they have to teach me about adaptation to change
through the driest of hot days,
to the coloring and loss of their leafy wardrobes,
to the barren nakedness of winter,
to the renewal of buds adorning spring branches.

Trees have plenty to say, but all in invisible silence. I’ve read about the communication that takes place underground between them via their roots and I have to say — I feel left out knowing I don’t speak or understand their language.

So I learn from trees by observing what is visible above the ground, especially when the light is just right.

Simply by merely being here, year after year – that means something.

Best of Barnstorming Photos: Summer/Fall 2021

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You don’t take a photograph. You ask quietly to borrow it.
~Author unknown

For more “Best of Barnstorming” photos from over the past decade, see these links:

Winter/Spring 2021

Summer/Fall 2020

Winter/Spring 2020

Summer/Fall 2019

Winter/Spring 2019

Summer/Fall 2018

Winter/Spring 2018

Summer/Fall 2017

Winter/Spring 2017

Summer/Fall 2016

Winter/Spring 2016

Summer/Fall 2015

Winter/Spring 2015

Summer/Fall 2014

Winter/Spring 2014

Best of 2013

Seasons on the Farm:

BriarCroft in Summer, in Autumn, in Winter, 
at Year’s End

More Barnstorming photos in this book of Lois Edstrom poetry, available to order here: