Tag: sunrises

January Light

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Today is one of those excellent January partly cloudies in which light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then the shadow sweeps it away. You know you’re alive. You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet’s roundness arc between your feet.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

After years of rarely paying attention,
too busy with work or household or barnyard tasks needing doing,
I realized only a finite number of sunrises and sunsets are left to me.

I don’t want to miss them, so now I stop, take a deep breath
and feel lucky to be alive, a witness to that moment.

My feet are planted on the ground beneath me.
My face feels the light from above,
then a shadow sweeps it away,
just for now, not forever.

Sometimes sunrises and sunsets are plain and gray,
just as I am,
but there are days lit from above and beneath
with a fire that ignites across the sky.

I too am engulfed for a moment or two,
until sun or shadow sweeps me away,
transfixed and transformed,
yet forever grateful for the moment of light.

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To Catch the Sunset

barnstormingblog6 Comments

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cupolawatson

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…he says
let’s walk up to the field and catch the sunset
and off we go, a couple of aging fools.

I hope, he says, on the other side there’s a lot
less work, but just in case I’m bringing tools.
~Maxine Kumin from “Chores”

sunset92horses4

sunset329164

When I pull open the barn doors
every morning
and close them again each evening,
as our grandparents did
one hundred years ago,
six rumbling voices
rise in greeting.
We exchange scents,
nuzzle each others’ ears,
rumble grumble back a response.

We do our chores faithfully
as our grandparents once did–
draw fresh water
into buckets,
wheel away
the pungent mess underfoot,
release an armful of summer
from the bale,
reach under heavy manes
to stroke silken necks.

We don’t depend
on our horses’ strength
and willingness to
don harness
to carry us to town
or move the logs
or till the soil
as our grandparents did.

Instead,
these soft eyed souls,
born on this farm
two long decades ago,
are simply grateful
for our constancy
morning and night
to serve their needs
until the day comes
they need no more.

And we depend on them
to depend on us
to be there
to open and close the doors;
their low whispering welcome
gives voice
to the blessings of
living on a farm
ripe with rhythms and seasons,
sunrises and sunsets,
as if yesterday, today and tomorrow are
just like one hundred years ago.

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