Tag: seasons

Swift Autumn

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photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

 

Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones
There’s something in this richness that I hate.
I love the look, austere, immaculate,
Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones.
There’s something in my very blood that owns
Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate,
A thread of water, churned to milky spate
Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones.
I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,
Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves;
That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath,
Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,
Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,
And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.
~Elinor Wylie from “Wild Peaches”
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Glowlight on a Grassblade

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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!
     
           In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad
  when the day ends, when the play ends; and ecstasy is too
  much pain.
We are children quickly tired: children who are up in the night
  and fall asleep as the rocket is fired; and the day is long for
  work or play.
We tire of distraction or concentration, we sleep and are glad
  to sleep,
Controlled by the rhythm of blood and the day and the night
  and the seasons.
And we must extinguish the candle, put out the light and
  relight it;
Forever must quench, forever relight the flame.
Therefore we thank Thee for our little light, that is dappled
  with shadow.
~T.S. Eliot from “O Light Invisible”

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Divine Glee

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What is this unfolding, this slow-
going unraveling of gift held
in hands open
to the wonder and enchantment of it all?

What is this growing, this rare
showing, like blossoming
of purple spotted forests
by roadsides grown weary with winter months?

Seasons affected, routinely disordered
by playful disturbance of divine glee
weaving through limbs with
sharpened shards of mirrored light,
cutting dark spaces, interlacing creation,
commanding life with whimsical delight.

What is this breaking, this hopeful
re-making, shifting stones, addressing dry bones,
dizzying me with blessings,
intercepting my grieving
and raising the dead all around me?~Enuma Okoro “Morning Reflections”

 

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The World Seen Through A Walnut

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Old friend now there is no one alive
who remembers when you were young
it was high summer when I first saw you
in the blaze of day most of my life ago
with the dry grass whispering in your shade
and already you had lived through wars
and echoes of wars around your silence
through days of parting and seasons of absence
with the house emptying as the years went their way
until it was home to bats and swallows
and still when spring climbed toward summer
you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers
of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened
you and the seasons spoke the same language
and all these years I have looked through your limbs
to the river below and the roofs and the night
and you were the way I saw the world
~W.S. Merwin from “Elegy for a Walnut”

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The Hues of Evening

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Like hues and harmonies of evening,
                Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
                Like memory of music fled,
                Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
The day becomes more solemn and serene
         When noon is past; there is a harmony
         In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
~Percy Bysshe Shelley
Noon has passed here;
our spring long spent
and now we come upon
a time of subtle beauty,
of hue and harmony,
a solemn serenity
no longer overwhelmed
by the clamor of summer.
The evening of autumn thus descends,
its luster becomes
a curtain of grace
cloaking and comforting,
readying us for winter.
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No Shame to Weep

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Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.”
~ Brian Jacques 

The end-of-summer farm is silently sobbing in its loss; tears of fall, from fog, mist and drizzle, cling to everything everywhere. I arrive back in the house from barn chores soaked through from walking through the weeping.  ‘Tis no shame to be drenched in such sorrow.

The memory of summer is pressed deep in our grieving its passing, our wounds healed by Light that illumines our tears.
We are never left comfortless and weep in the knowing.

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Yielding Spring With Grace

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Rhodendron forest Rowallen Gardens, County Down, Ireland
Rhodendron forest Rowallen Gardens, County Down, Ireland

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 from “Reluctance”

It is, for me, a reluctant solstice.  I am unready to relinquish this hard-won daylight back to the night.   Here is Ireland I was amazed to see light on the horizon as early as 3:30 AM and it is still quite light out at 10:45 PM or later, almost two more hours of daylight here than at home.   The farmers are making use of this extra time; the tractors are busy until dark bringing in silage and round bales all around us.  At home the grass still is standing with almost an inch of rain yesterday.  No hay yet; it is waiting for us to fly home.

Northern Ireland is full of rhododendron forests,  centuries-old trees standing 20-30 feet high still blooming a full month after ours at home had finished.  A late spring reluctantly is yielding to summer as the delicate blooms wither to brown and fall to the ground, looking very much like autumn leaves.

I bow to this transition and accept the new season with grace, with glad sadness and sad gladness.   I will carry this extra light from Ireland home in my words, my pictures and my memories, to brighten my heart on a winters’ night.

A hillside of rhododendron in the Mourne Mountains, County Down, Ireland
A hillside of rhododendron in the Mourne Mountains, County Down, Ireland

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A Taste of the Forever Summer

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“All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.” ~ L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams

Time lurches ahead in imprecisely measured chunks.  Sometimes the beginning and ending of seasons are the yardstick,  or celebrating a holiday or a birthday.  Memories tend to be stickiest surrounding a milestone event: a graduation, a move, a wedding, a birth, a road trip, a funeral.

But Summer needs nothing so remarkable to be memorable.  It simply stands on its own in all its extravagant abundance of light and warmth and growth and color stretching deep within the rising and setting horizons.  Each long day can feel like it must last forever, never ending, yet it does eventually wind down, spin itself out, darkening gradually into shadow.  We let go with reluctance; we feel as if no summer like it will ever come again.

Yet another will, somehow, somewhere, someday.  Surely a never-ending summer is what heaven itself will be.

Perfectly delightful and delightfully perfect.  We’ve already had a taste.

 

Slumber Undisturbed

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Blazing sun bakes a lichen crust
atop a stone so feverish to touch
it becomes hearth without fire
reaching hot fingers deep
into soil supporting a box
that knows no warmth.

When windstorms rage
lightning crack and thunder clap
trembles anew the hole filled ground
as dying leaves spin and swirl
through arcing cascade into
settled and spent.

Till crisp hoarfrost clings
in glittering crystalline coverlet
from gray sky that throws down
soft cotton batting gently
fluffed to protect a slumber
undisturbed and silent.

Soon vernal raindrops bring
promise of quenched thirst
for dry bones lying suspended
between the welkin sky
and earth’s deep pit
to blossom finally in fullness.