Tag: Summer

Waking on a June Morning

barnstormingblog2 Comments

sunrise611143

Some of the most powerful memories of summer come out of our childhood
when we wake up on a June morning and suddenly remember that school is out
and that summer stretches in front of us as endlessly as the infinities of space.

Everything is different.
The old routines are gone.
The relentless school bus isn’t coming.
The bells will be silent in silent hallways.

And all the world is leafy green,
and will be green,
forever and ever.
~Ray Bradbury

summershadow

treehousesunset

Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.
~ Harper Lee in Too Kill a Mockingbird

thistleseeds

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.

easternlandscape2

sunrise724154

These Melancholy Days

barnstormingblog4 Comments

snowice

 

barebones8

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood
In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race, of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again.
~William Cullen Bryant from “The Death of the Flowers”

octleaf4

octleaf7

These dark and sodden days are scarcely recalled while basking in the lightness of June when the sun shines 19 hours a day.  There is no way to cope with such overwhelming darkness except by adding in a few minutes more a day over six months, otherwise the shock of leaving behind the light would be too great.  The howling wind knocks and batters, the rain beats mercilessly at the window panes, the puddles stand deeper than they appear, the mud sucks off boots, the leaves thoroughly shaken from embarrassed branches.

We have no remnant of summer civility and frivolity left; we must adapt or cry trying, only adding to a pervasive sogginess.

Nevertheless, these melancholy days have their usefulness — there are times of joyful respite from frenetic activity while reading, snuggled deep under quilts, safe and warm.  Without such stark contrast, the light and bright time of year would become merely routine, yet just another sunny day.

That never happens here in the north.

We can now celebrate the emerging light with real thanksgiving and acknowledging this darkness makes gratitude more genuine.

We are privileged to live within a paradox:  there is, after all, a gladness in our sadness.

 

barnrooflines

morning1219151

Summer Out of Winter

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

januarymoon

januarybug

 

He brought light out of darkness,
not out of a lesser light,
and he can bring thee summer out of winter,
though thou hast no spring.
Though in the ways of fortune, understanding, or conscience
thou hast been benighted till now,
wintered and frozen,
clouded and eclipsed,
damped and benumbed,
smothered and stupefied,
now God comes to thee,
not as the dawning of the day,
not as the bud of the spring,
but as the sun at noon.
~John Donne

______

I get caught by winter,
damped and benumbed,
stuck in place, frozen to the spot.
Only God can come,
like the winter sun dim at noon,
almost invisible, but there,
encouraging the shoot from the ground,
drying our wings,
wringing the darkness
to free the reluctant light.
~EPG

 

fog101954

snowdrops212316

fogsun

Late Revelers at Dawn

barnstormingblog3 Comments

sunrise101215

frontyard1015

bluestskies

eveninglight1010151

Bending above the spicy woods which blaze,
Arch skies so blue they flash, and hold the sun
Immeasurably far; the waters run
Too slow, so freighted are the river-ways
With gold of elms and birches from the maze
Of forests. Chestnuts, clicking one by one,
Escape from satin burs; her fringes done,
The gentian spreads them out in sunny days,
And, like late revelers at dawn, the chance
Of one sweet, mad, last hour, all things assail,
And conquering, flush and spin; while, to enhance
The spell, by sunset door, wrapped in a veil
Of red and purple mists, the summer, pale,
Steals back alone for one more song and dance.
~Helen Hunt Jackson “October”

 

Summer is stretching long this fall,
with warm temperatures both day and night,
grass growing like spring
bushes blooming confused six months off
sun rises lit by flame that lick the sky.

I am eager for one more song and dance,
one more sweet hour,
each dawn bringing renewed revelry.

chestnutpod

 

chestnut

 

sunrise1012153

sunset827152

Never Forgotten

barnstormingblog1 Comment

 

brothers

fallcrocus2

“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.

 

dandy9101511

clematis2

creeper915

sunflower1

Let Fall Your Shadows

barnstormingblog6 Comments

sunrise913152

sunrise91315

geese913

 

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Let fall your shadows on the sundials,
upon the fields let loose your winds.

Command the last fruits to be full;
give them just two more southern days,
Press them to completion, and chase the last
sweetness into the heavy wine.

Who has no house now – he will never build.
Whoever is alone now, long will so remain;
will stay awake, and read, and write long letters
and wander the alleys up and down,
restless, as the leaves are drifting.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Autumn Day”

 

This sadness that fall brings
is less about the ending of a long hot dry summer
and more about deepening shadows,
the fullness of harvest,
the drifting and dying to self.

I am misty in memories
of children dressed for school
eating around a full kitchen table,
of chores done hurriedly on frosty mornings,
of afternoons darkening too early
from drizzly clouds,
of nights under heavy comforters.

Lord, it is time.  Too soon, too soon.
Help ready me.

 

fallcrocus

dogwoodfall

pears9614

dogwood911

The Brows of Morning

barnstormingblog3 Comments

sunrise95155

 

begoniabud

begonia9152

“The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust’ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather’d clouds strew flowers round her head.

“The spirits of the air live on the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.”
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat;
Then rose, girded himself, and o’er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.
~William Blake from “To Autumn”

 

For northwest native webfoots like myself, this has been an atypically tough summer: no rain, full-out heat and humidity, melting glaciers, dust, drought, fires, smoke and water restrictions.  When the string of three plus months of overwhelming sun finally broke in a devastating wind and rainstorm this past weekend, I for one celebrated, despite no power and no water for a couple of days.  Since then the rain has poured and snow has fallen on bare rock in the mountains.  This morning the fog returned with moisture rising from spider-webbed soppy ground to meet the roselight of the dawn.

Praise God this Morning for a blissful relief
found in furrowed brows of Morning,
of foggy feather’d clouds;
we move from clust’ring Summer
to the golden load of jolly Autumn.

hydrangearain915

webleash

websun

sunrise94156

Each Minute the Last

barnstormingblog4 Comments

11951312_1198925466800331_3990099488883249004_nphoto of Watson Lakes in the North Cascades by Benjamin Janicki

The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun,
each day the last day.

A red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily

moves his delicate feet
and long tail. I hold
my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.
~Denise Levertov

creeper29145

To think that this meaningless thing was ever a rose,
Scentless, colourless, this!
Will it ever be thus (who knows?)
Thus with our bliss,
If we wait till the close?

Though we care not to wait for the end, there comes the end
Sooner, later, at last,
Which nothing can mar, nothing mend:
An end locked fast,
Bent we cannot re-bend.
~Christina Rossetti “Summer is Ended”

homerose

As now school buses drone past the farm,
no longer bearing our children away to greater knowledge,
as they each have caught rides far beyond my reach.
I recall each first day of school feels like a day of mourning
each “last” of summer a loss, each ending so bent
I find no strength to bend it back carefree,
and I must learn, once more, with each “last”,
how fleeting the bliss of this life.

backsidebriarcroft

On the Spot, Watching

barnstormingblog3 Comments

rainstorm

breezetrees

A tree can’t thrash its branches;
it waits for the wind to move them.
I can manufacture neither poems nor spiritual power,
but my task is to be on the spot, watching,
ready when the breeze picks up.
~Luci Shaw from Breath for the Bones

 

I awake as a gust unlatches our front door ajar,
blinds clattering over screened windows
yawning open for months;
raindrops blowing everywhere,
sucked up with a thirst
unknown by this soil before.

I thirst too~
sweat-dried from a too-long summer,
eager to be tasked with watching
this amazing change
to be moved as it passes by,
bowed and bent by its power.

breezepoplar

breezebirch

 

A Wordless Immanence

barnstormingblog1 Comment

tablerain

in celebration of a night’s rain and possibly more to come after months of drought, dust and wildfires to the east ~~~
… relief for the change in weather, but sadness at the coming transition to the dying darkness of autumn.

herbgardenrain

At the end of August, fall nip in the air,
I sensed something beyond me,
Everywhere I felt it in my flesh
As I beheld the sea and sky, the day,
The wordless immanence of the eternal…
~Richard Eberhart from “The Loon Call”

irishoodrain

August rain:
the best of the summer gone,
and the new fall not yet born.
The odd uneven time.
~Sylvia Plath

herbgardenrain2

clotheslinerain

I want to be bruised by God.
I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.
I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.   
I want to be entered and picked clean.
~Charles Wright from “Clear Night”
weedgrasshopperrain
birdsfilbertrain