Tag: shatter

Clouds Gathering Around My Feet

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Like animals moving daily
through the same open field,
it should be easier to distinguish
light from dark, fabrications

from memory, rain on a sliver
of grass from dew appearing
overnight. In these moments
of desperation, a sentence

serves as a halo, the moon
hidden so the stars eclipse
our daily becoming. You think
it should be easier to define

one’s path, but with the clouds
gathering around our feet,
there’s no sense in retracing
where we’ve been or where

your tired body will carry you.
Eventually the birds become
confused and inevitable. Even our
infinite knowledge of the forecast

might make us more vulnerable
than we would be in drawn-out
ignorance. To the sun
all weeds eventually rise up.
~Adam Clay “Our Daily Becoming”

I stroll among clouds surrounding my feet,
tiny puff balls that shatter and fall.

Watching the seeds scatter is a reminder
of the inevitable march of time,
for what will be no more, for what is sure to come

I’m given another day to get it right before I too blow away:
to be fruitful by rising up, my face to the sun, even in my weediness.

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A Humble and Silky Life

barnstormingblog3 Comments

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises, 
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open —
pools of lace, 
white and pink —

and all day
under the shifty wind, 
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies, 
and tip their fragrance to the air, 
and rise, 
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness 
gladly and lightly, 
and there it is again — 
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open. 
Do you love this world? 
Do you cherish your humble and silky life? 
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, 
and softly, 
and exclaiming of their dearness, 
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, 
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?
~Mary Oliver from New And Selected Poems 

White peonies blooming along the porch
send out light
while the rest of the yard grows dim.
Outrageous flowers as big as human
heads! They’re staggered
by their own luxuriance: I had
to prop them up with stakes and twine.
The moist air intensifies their scent,
and the moon moves around the barn
to find out what it’s coming from.
In the darkening June evening
I draw a blossom near, and bending close
search it as a woman searches
a loved one’s face.
~Jane Kenyon “Peonies at Dusk”

This coming weekend, I will bring our peonies
to the graves of those from whom I came,
to lay one after another exuberant floral head
upon each headstone,
a moment of connection between those in the ground
and me standing above, acknowledging its thin space
when one more humble and silky life shatters,
its petals slowly
scatter, lush and trembling,
to the wind.

Let my soul rise up to meet You
As the day rises to the sun
Let my soul rise up to meet You
Let that patient kingdom come

When’s the last time you felt steady in the chaos?
Hear the sound when the seed falls to earth
Is it time to give up your destination?
Slow me down, let love do its work
Let my soul rise up to meet You

As the trees and hummingbirds lead the chorus
They work so hard, and their center so still
Is it time for a change in direction?
Slow me down where I bend to Your will

Slow me down Slow me down
Let love do its work

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Opening for the Sun

barnstormingblog5 Comments

The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.
~Louise Glück “The Red Poppy”

What would poppies tell me if they could speak?

They would remind me that my existence is solely dependent on my Creator God who made me from dust, just like a seed. My color and fullness and growth is due to His sun and His rain and His breath blowing life and soul into me.

So I open slowly, eager to be known, to be loved and to love until the fire shining in the heart of me is like His fire, reflecting His glory.

And so I will shatter here — yet I know there is more. Even my God planted himself here, opening up His beauty, thrived, then died here, and raised from the dark here.

God shatters so I can thrive and flourish, to be ready to open again.

Forever and ever.

A new book from Barnstorming available for order here.

Grace is Glue

barnstormingblog4 Comments

Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.
~Eugene O’Neill

We are born hollering,
already aware of our brokenness –
our emptiness evident
from the first breath,
each tiny air sac bursting
with the air of a fallen world
that is never quite enough to satisfy.

The rest of our days are spent
filling up our empty spaces:
whether alveoli
or stomach
or synapse hungry for knowledge;
still hollering and heart
broken.

So we mend and are mended
through healing another,
sewn up
by knitting together
the scraggly fragments of lives,
becoming the crucial glue
boiled from His gifted Grace,
all empty holes made holy
when filled to brimming
so wholly.

To Be Wild and Perfect

barnstormingblog5 Comments

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises, 
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open —
pools of lace, 
white and pink —

and all day
under the shifty wind, 
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies, 
and tip their fragrance to the air, 
and rise, 
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness 
gladly and lightly, 
and there it is again — 
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open. 
Do you love this world? 
Do you cherish your humble and silky life? 
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, 
and softly, 
and exclaiming of their dearness, 
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, 
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?
~Mary Oliver from New And Selected Poems 

It is not about love or sacrifice,
nothing vestal or sacred. The light
comes from an open window,
and perhaps a breeze too that
has caused the white peony to
drop three delicately curved
petals on the red jacquard.
They cast purple shadows. The
eye must seek them out, must
avert itself from the ceaseless
action in the midst of other
objects: a runcible spoon, a
quill, a tankard, two ripe quince.
Athena Kildegaard, “Still Life with Beating Heart” from Ventriloquy

White peonies blooming along the porch
send out light
while the rest of the yard grows dim.
Outrageous flowers as big as human
heads! They’re staggered
by their own luxuriance: I had
to prop them up with stakes and twine.
The moist air intensifies their scent,
and the moon moves around the barn
to find out what it’s coming from.
In the darkening June evening
I draw a blossom near, and bending close
search it as a woman searches
a loved one’s face.
~Jane Kenyon “Peonies at Dusk”

At the end of May, I bring our peonies to the graves
of those from whom I came,
to lay one after another exuberant head
upon each headstone,
a moment of connection between those in the ground
and me standing above, acknowledging its thin space before one more humble and silky life shatters
and becomes nothing,
its petals perfectly
scattered, lush and trembling,
to the wind.

The Velvet of Sleep

barnstormingblog4 Comments

roseunfurl

 

roseswirl5

 

The children have gone to bed.
We are so tired we could fold ourselves neatly
behind our eyes and sleep mid-word, sleep standing
warm among the creatures in the barn, lean together
and sleep, forgetting each other completely in the velvet,
the forgiveness of that sleep.

Then the one small cry:
one strike of the match-head of sound:
one child’s voice:
and the hundred names of love are lit
as we rise and walk down the hall.

One hundred nights we wake like this,
wake out of our nowhere
to kneel by small beds in darkness.
One hundred flowers open in our hands,
a name for love written in each one.
~Annie Lighthart “The Hundred Names of Love”

 

eveningrose4

 

wwurose619151

 

Each of many nights of a child wakening,
each of many moments of rocking them in the dark,
lulling them back to that soft velvet of sleep,
I feel my budding love
unfurling in fragrance
of blossomed fullness,
unfurling until there is no inner spiral left,
and each petal, one by one, drops away,
grateful.

 

 

sunsetrosepetals

 

peonyshower

 

shatterpeony

 

Shattered

barnstormingblog3 Comments

img_0118

 

As through a long-abandoned half-standing house
only someone lost could find,

which, with its paneless windows and sagging crossbeams,
its hundred crevices in which a hundred creatures hoard and nest,

seems both ghost of the life that happened there
and living spirit of this wasted place,

wind seeks and sings every wound in the wood
that is open enough to receive it,

shatter me God into my thousand sounds.

~Christian Wiman “Small Prayer in a Hard Wind”

 

538777_436390479723604_919384933_n
same abandoned school house near Rapalje, Montana a few years later, photo by Joel DeWaard

 

 

May I,
though sagging and graying,
leaning perilously,
be porous enough
to allow life’s daily gusts
blow through me
without being pushed over
in a heap.

Then the wind,
filling my every crack
and defect,
may cause me to sing.

Someday when I shatter,
collapsing into pieces,
it will be amidst
a mosaic of praises.

 

541343_436390493056936_1391544763_n
photo by Joel DeWaard

 

1233407_683997988296184_779175851_n
photo by Joel DeWaard

Shatter Me

barnstormingblog6 Comments

img_0118

 

As through a long-abandoned half-standing house
only someone lost could find,

which, with its paneless windows and sagging crossbeams,
its hundred crevices in which a hundred creatures hoard and nest,

seems both ghost of the life that happened there
and living spirit of this wasted place,

wind seeks and sings every wound in the wood
that is open enough to receive it,

shatter me God into my thousand sounds.

~Christian Wiman “Small Prayer in a Hard Wind”

 

May I,
though sagging and graying,
leaning perilously,
be porous enough
to allow life’s gusts
through me
without being pushed over
in a heap.

So the wind
makes me sing
filling my every crack
and defect,
shattered into pieces,
a mosaic of praises.
~E Gibson