It is dry, hazy June weather.
We are more of the earth,
farther from heaven these days.
I pray that the life of this spring and summer
may ever lie fair in my memory.~Henry David Thoreau
Tag: Summer
The World Seen Through A Walnut
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”
Caught and Stoppered
“Dandelion wine.
The words were summer on the tongue.
The wine was summer caught and stoppered…
sealed away for opening on a January day
with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks…”
~Ray Bradbury from Dandelion Wine
Now is mid-January:
Summer is found in our dark root cellar–
in rows of canned fruit and
a pile of potatoes
Summer is found in our freezer–
containers of berries and dehydrated pears
alongside bags of pea pods, corn and beans.
Summer is found in our barn–
piles of hay bales to be opened
to release the smell, the sun, the sweat of a midsummer evening’s harvest.
No Shame to Weep
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.
Barbarous in Beauty
Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the
Stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what
lovely behavior
Of silk-sack clouds! Has wilder, willful-waiver
Meal-drift molded ever and melted across the skies?
~Gerard Manly Hopkins, “Hurrahing in Harvest”
How to Pay Attention
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
– Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”
Sometimes it is enough to kneel in the grass to capture the right light at the precise moment it is sent from above. It is prayer to be blessed so, prayer to pay attention, prayer to be grateful for that moment. I find myself on my knees often these days because it all will be gone too soon, much too soon.
The Tears of Summer
The grasses in the field have toppled,
and in places it seems that a large, now
absent, animal must have passed the night.
The hay will right itself if the day
turns dry.
I miss you steadily, painfully
~Jane Kenyon from “Heavy Summer Rain”
The sun returns
and the tears will dry.
The impression left on my heart
still twinges with every beat.
Eventually, though trampled and toppled,
I right myself to face the rain again.
The truth is, I need it, can’t live without it.
Always Summer
The serene philosophy of the pink rose is steadying. It fragrant, delicate petals open fully and are ready to fall, without regret or disillusion, after only a day in the sun. It is so every summer. One can almost hear their pink, fragrant murmur as they settle down upon the grass: “Summer, summer, it will always be summer.”
~ Rachel Peden
And so it always will be summer when one lets go in the midst of brightness when all is glorious. No cold winds, no unending days of rain, no mildew, no iced walkways, no 18 hours of night every day, no turning brown with rot.
Serene and steadying — with so much brevity.
Let me be strong and serene through all seasons rather than letting go at the height of delicate beauty. Let me thrive steady through the hard times rather than withering at my peak. Let me age, let me turn gray, let me wrinkle.
It may always be summer — someday — but not yet. Not here. Not now.
A Fleeting Meeting
And yet day and night meet fleetingly at twilight and dawn. And their merging sometimes affords the beholder the most enchanted moments of all the twenty four hours. A sunrise or sunset can be ablaze with brilliance and arouse all the passion, all the yearning, in the soul of the beholder.
~Mary Balogh in A Summer to Remember
Daisies’ Dance
See, the grass is full of stars,
Fallen in their brightness;
Hearts they have of shining gold,
Rays of shining whiteness.
Buttercups have honeyed hearts,
Bees they love the clover,
But I love the daisies’ dance
All the meadow over.
Blow, O blow, you happy winds,
Singing summer’s praises,
Up the field and down the field
A-dancing with the daisies.
~Marjorie Pickthall “Daisy Time”
Barnstorming 