An empty day without events. And that is why it grew immense as space. And suddenly happiness of being entered me.
I heard in my heartbeat the birth of time and each instant of life one after the other came rushing in like priceless gifts. ~Anna Swir “Priceless Gifts” from Talking To My Body
It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. The world, the truth, is more abounding, more delightful, more demanding than we thought. What appeared for a time perhaps to be mere dutifulness … suddenly breaks open in sweetness — and we are not where we thought we were, nowhere that we could have expected to be. ~Wendell Berry from “Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms,” in Standing By Words
Who among us knows with certainty each morning what we are meant to do this day or where we might be asked to go?
Or do we make our best guess by putting one foot ahead of the other until the day is done and it is time to rest?
For me, over five decades of work, I woke humbled by commitment and duty and kept going, even when baffled and impeded.
While doctoring, I tried so hard to keep my eyes open for beauty within the painful times.
These days now overflow with uncertainty of what comes next: each heartbeat a new birth. My real work remains a search for life’s priceless beauty.
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They lie on the ground after the deer have left after the bear has had her fill they
lie under the stars and under the sun in a cloud of brambles the ripest ones fall first become black jam in the thatch. as a boy I hated picking blackberries the pail never full like one half of a slow conversation.
Now their taste is sweeter in memory the insect buzz the branches too high the blue summer never quite over before the fall begins. ~Richard Terrell from “Blackberries” from What Falls Away is Always
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills We trekked and picked until the cans were full, Until the tinkling bottom had been covered With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not. ~Seamus Heaney from “Blackberry Picking”
In the early morning an old woman is picking blackberries in the shade. It will be too hot later but right now there’s dew.
Some berries fall: those are for squirrels. Some are unripe, reserved for bears. Some go into the metal bowl. Those are for you, so you may taste them just for a moment. That’s good times: one little sweetness after another, then quickly gone.
Once, this old woman I’m conjuring up for you would have been my grandmother. Today it’s me. Years from now it might be you, if you’re quite lucky.
The hands reaching in among the leaves and spines were once my mother’s. I’ve passed them on. Decades ahead, you’ll study your own temporary hands, and you’ll remember. Don’t cry, this is what happens.
Look! The steel bowl is almost full. Enough for all of us. The blackberries gleam like glass, like the glass ornaments we hang on trees in December to remind ourselves to be grateful for snow.
Some berries occur in sun, but they are smaller. It’s as I always told you: the best ones grow in shadow. ~Margaret Atwood “Blackberries” from Dearly
I love to go out in late September among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries to eat blackberries for breakfast, the stalks very prickly, a penalty they earn for knowing the black art of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries fall almost unbidden to my tongue, as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words like strengths or squinched, many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps, which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well in the silent, startled, icy, black language of blackberry-eating in late September. ~Galway Kinnell “Blackberry Eating”
Blackberry vines are trouble 90% of the year – always growing where they are not welcome – reaching out to grab passersby without discriminating between human, dog or horse. But for a month in late summer and early fall, they yield black gold – bursting, swelling, unimaginably sweet fruit that is worth the hassle tolerated the rest of the weeks of the year.
It has been an unusually dry summer here in the Pacific Northwest with little rain until recently, so the fields are brown and even the usually lush blackberry vines have started to dry and color up. The berries themselves are rich from the sun but starting now to shrivel and mold.
Our Haflinger horses have been fed hay for the past several weeks as there is not enough pasture for them without the supplement–we are about 6 weeks ahead of schedule in feeding hay. I had grown a little suspicious the last couple nights as I brought the Haflingers into the barn for the night. Two of the mares turned out in the back field had purplish stains on their chests and front legs. Hmmmm. Raiding the berries. Desperate drought forage behavior in an extremely efficient eating machine.
So this evening I headed toward the berries. When the mares saw the bowl in my hand, that was it. They mobbed me. I was irresistible.
So with mares in tow, I approached a berry bank. It was ravaged. Trampled. Haflinger poop piles everywhere. All that were left were some clusters of gleaming black berries up high overhead, barely reachable on my tip toes, and only reachable if I walked directly into the thicket. The mares stood in a little line behind me, pondering me as I pondered my dilemma.
I set to work picking what I could reach, snagging, ripping and bloodying my hands and arms, despite my sleeves. Pretty soon I had mares on either side of me, diving into the brambles and reaching up to pick what they could reach as well, unconcerned about the thorns that tore at their sides and muzzles. They were like sharks in bloody water–completely focused on their prey and amazingly skilled at grabbing just the black berries, and not the pale green or red ones.
Plump Haflingers and one *plumpish* woman were willingly accumulating scars in the name of sweetness.
When my bowl was full, I extracted myself from the brambles and contemplated how I was going to safely make it back to the barn without being mare-mugged. Instead, they obediently trailed behind me, happy to be put in their stalls for their evening hay, accepting a gift from me with no thorns or vines attached.
Clearly, thorns are part of our everyday life. Thorns stand in front of much that is sweet and good and precious to us. They tear us up, bloody us, make us cry, make us beg for mercy.
Yet thorns have been overcome. They did not stop our salvation, did not stop goodness raining down on us, did not stop the taste of sweetness given as a gracious gift.
If we hesitate, thorns only proliferate unchecked.
So, desperate and hungry, we dive right in, to taste and eat.
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I’m on my knees among the crisp brown crunch then stand in time to see two boys slim teens in shorts white t-shirts faces glowing talking quietly bounce of a tennis ball fading as they pass and I’m filled again with a crush of old sweetness at how giving a moment can be as it vanishes the roughened grey branches of the pear small knobby fingers flung out at every tip fresh clutch of weeds at my chest ~Rosie King “Again” from Time and Peonies
Sometimes this feeling hits me – like a blow to the chest taking away my breath – how time passes so swiftly. The flow of days takes bare knobby pear branches in March to April’s fragrant buds and blossoms, to May’s swelling fruit to harvest in late summer, then prepared for storage of its sweetness to be consumed in the dark of winter. Another year and crop of pears gone – just like that.
In a flash of recognition, I try to grasp and clutch this realization to my heart and in one heartbeat it vanishes, leaving a residue of “what was” in the midst of “what is” while on the horizon is “what will be.”
Each year, I place our pears in a bottle (so to speak) – actually jars and dehydrator – it is so much easier than preserving the vanishing hours, days and years.
I breathe in deeply and think: How much this moment gives and takes. How crushed I am by its sweetness.
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When the soft cushion of sunset lingers with residual stains of dappled cobbler clouds, predicting the soul of sweetness in next day’s dawn~ I’m reminded to “remember this, this moment, this feeling”…
I realize this too will be lost, slipping away from me in mere moments, a sacramental fading away. I can barely remember the sweetness of its taste, so what’s left is the stain of its loss.
Balancing as best I can on life’s cobbled path, stumbling and tripping over rough unforgiving spots, I ponder the sweet messy kindness of today’s helping of soulful shortcake, treasure it up, stains and all, knowing I would never miss it this much if I hadn’t been allowed a taste, and savored it to begin with.
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Broad August burns in milky skies, The world is blanched with hazy heat; The vast green pasture, even, lies Too hot and bright for eyes and feet.
Amid the grassy levels rears The sycamore against the sun The dark boughs of a hundred years, The emerald foliage of one.
Lulled in a dream of shade and sheen, Within the clement twilight thrown By that great cloud of floating green, A horse is standing, still as stone.
He stirs nor head nor hoof, although The grass is fresh beneath the branch; His tail alone swings to and fro In graceful curves from haunch to haunch.
He stands quite lost, indifferent To rack or pasture, trace or rein; He feels the vaguely sweet content Of perfect sloth in limb and brain. ~William Canton “Standing Still”
I flunked sloth long ago. Perhaps I was born driven. My older sister, never a morning person, was thoroughly annoyed to share a bedroom with a toddler who awoke chirpy and cheerful, singing “Twinkle Twinkle” for all to hear and ready to conquer the day.
Since retiring, I admit I am becoming accustomed now to sloth-dom. I am still too cheerful in the early morning. It is a distinct character flaw.
Even so, I’m not immune to the attractions of a hot hazy day of doing absolutely nothing but standing still switching at flies. I envy our retired ponies in the pasture who spend the day grazing, moseying, and lazing because … I have worked hard to make that life possible for them.
I want to use my days well yet I know August was invented for lulling about. Maybe there is a reason to be here beyond just warning the flies away but I’m not working hard to find out what it might be. So perhaps I’ll get a passing grade in sloth after all.
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Well-away and be it so, To the stranger let them go. Even cheerfully I yield Pasture, orchard, mowing-field, Yea and wish him all the gain I required of them in vain. Yea and I can yield him house, Barn, and shed, with rat and mouse To dispute possession of. These I can unlearn to love. Since I cannot help it? Good! Only be it understood, It shall be no trespassing If I come again some spring In the grey disguise of years, Seeking ache of memory here. ~Robert Frost from “On the Sale of My Farm”
From the road, each of the two small farms where I grew up in western Washington state (Stanwood and Olympia) look nothing like they did in my childhood. When I drive past now, whether on Google Earth virtual reality or for real , the outbuildings have changed and are unfamiliar, fences pulled down, the trees exponentially taller or gone altogether, the fields no longer well-tended. Instead the familiarity is in the road to get there, the lean into the curves, the acceleration in and out of dips, the landscape which triggers a simultaneous comfort and disquiet deep in my DNA.
Though my brother recently stopped and looked around our long-ago childhood home, and sent me pictures that looked barely recognizable, I myself have never stopped to knock; instead I have driven slowly past to sense if I feel what I used to feel in these places. My memories are indeed triggered but feel a bit as if they must have happened to someone else.
I have the same feeling when driving past my parents’ childhood farms in Anacortes and in the Palouse wheat fields. Part of me belongs to these places even though they have never been truly “mine” – only part of sweet memories from my own childhood.
One clinic day a few years ago, I glanced at the home address of a young man I was about to see for a medical issue and I realized he now lived in my childhood home over 100 miles away. When I greeted him I told him we had something in common: we had grown up under the same roof, inside the same walls, though children of two different generations. He was curious but skeptical — how could this gray-haired middle aged woman know anything about his home? He told me a bit about the house, the barn, the fields, the garden and how he experienced it felt altogether strange to me. He and I had shared nothing but a patch of real estate — our recollections were so completely disparate.
The two daughters of the family who sold our current farm to us over thirty years ago have been back to visit a time or two, and have driven by whenever they are in the area. Many things remain familiar to them but also too much has changed – it is not quite the same farm they remember from their childhood. I know it aches to visit here but they do let me know when a photo I post has a particular sweet memory for them.
I worry for the fearsome ache if someday, due to age or finances, we must sell this farm we cherish ~ this beloved place our children were raised, animals bred and cared for, fruit picked from an ancient orchard, plants tended and soil turned over. It will remain on the map surely as the other two farms of my past, visible as we pass by slowly on the road, but primarily alive in the words and photos I harvest here.
There will always be that sweet ache of hoping something will still remain familiar on the map of my memory. After all, there is no such beauty as the place where I belonged – now and forever ago.
Tell me, where is the road I can call my own That I left, that I lost So long ago? All these years I have wandered Oh, when will I know There’s a way, there’s a road That will lead me home
After wind, after rain When the dark is done As I wake from a dream In the gold of day Through the air there’s a calling From far away There’s a voice I can hear That will lead me home
Rise up, follow me Come away, is the call With the love in your heart As the only song There is no such beauty As where you belong Rise up, follow me I will lead you home ~Michael Dennis Browne
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Did you find everything you were looking for?Julie, the magenta-haired
checkout girl, asks, and no, I think, I didn’t find inner peace, or answers to
several questions I’ve been mulling, like are we headed for nuclear war and
does the rest of the world think America has gone bonkers and also, by the way,
I could not find the tofu bacon, and the chocolate sorbet shelf was empty
(I did find canned pumpkin in aisle four) but I am silent and smile at Julie who
seems to know what I’m thinking anyway so I hold back and muse on the view
of the bay this morning when we walked the dog and the parsnip soup we’ll
make for dinner and realize that total fulfillment probably jades the senses and
the bagger asks if I’d like help today carrying my groceries out to the car. ~Thomas R. Moore, “Finding Everything” from Red Stone Fragments
He was a new old man behind the counter, skinny, brown and eager. He greeted me like a long-lost daughter, as if we both came from the same world, someplace warmer and more gracious…
…his face lit up as if I were his prodigal daughter returning, coming back to the freezer bins in front of the register which were still and always filled with the same old Cable Car ice cream sandwiches and cheap frozen greens. Back to the knobs of beef and packages of hotdogs, these familiar shelves strung with potato chips and corn chips…
I lumbered to the case and bought my precious bottled water and he returned my change, beaming as if I were the bright new buds on the just-bursting-open cherry trees, as if I were everything beautiful struggling to grow, and he was blessing me as he handed me my dime over the counter and the plastic tub of red licorice whips. This old man who didn’t speak English beamed out love to me in the iron week after my mother’s death so that when I emerged from his store my whole cock-eyed life – what a beautiful failure ! – glowed gold like a sunset after rain. ~Alison Luterman from “At the Corner Store”
During these two years of COVID-time precautions, grocery shopping has been an extra ordeal for both the shoppers and the store workers. We remain hidden behind our masks – both the ones mandated by state regulations to be covering our faces, as well as the ones we usually hide behind while out and about in polite society.
This week as I shopped in one of our local grocery stores, I witnessed a particularly poignant scene. As I waited my six foot distance in the check out line, the older man ahead of me was greeted by the young cashier with the standard “Did you find everything you were looking for?” He looked at her from behind his mask and his eyes were obviously smiling as she scanned his groceries. He responded with: “I looked for world peace on your shelves, but it must have been sold out…”
She stopped scanning and looked directly at him for the first time, trying to discern if she misunderstood him or if he was mocking her or what. “Did you try Aisle 4?” she replied and they both laughed. They continued in light-hearted conversation as she continued scanning and once he had paid for his order and packed up his cart, he looked at her again.
“Thank for so much for coming to work today – I am so grateful for what you do.” He wheeled away his groceries and she stood, stunned, watching him go.
As I came up next, I looked at her watering eyes as she tried to compose herself and I said to her: “I’ll bet you don’t hear that often enough, do you?” She pulled herself together and shook her head, trying to make sense of the gift of words he had bestowed on her.
“No – like never,” she said as she scanned my groceries. “How could he possibly have known that I almost didn’t come to work today because it has been so stressful to be here? People are usually polite, but lately more and more have been so mean and refusing to put on their masks when I ask them to. No one seems to care about how others are feeling any more.”
She brushed away a tear and I paid for my groceries, and told her:
“I hope the rest of your work day is as great as that last customer. You’ve given me everything I was looking for today…”
And I emerged from the store feeling like I had scored a pot of gold like a sunset after rain.
Try finding everything you are looking for in a book of beauty in words and photographs, available to order here:
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I made for grief a leaden bowl and drank it, every drop. And though I thought I’d downed it all the hurting didn’t stop.
I made of hope a golden sieve to drain my world of pain. Though I was sure I’d bled it dry the void filled up again.
I made of words a silver fork and stabbed love in the heart, and when I found the sweetness gone I chewed it into art. ~Luci Shaw “What I Needed to Do”
How can I stow away our hurt and grief when it keeps refilling, leaking everywhere? Where can hope be found when all feels hopeless? When I have been loved beyond all measure, with bleeding hands and feet and side; why not turn to the Word, its sweetness never exhausted no matter how often I chew through it in my hunger.
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Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills We trekked and picked until the cans were full, Until the tinkling bottom had been covered With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not. ~Seamus Heaney “Blackberry Picking”
…Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you… Ezekiel 2:6
In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. ~John Stottfrom The Cross
Today I will make wild blackberry cobbler, facing down the brambles and briers that thwart my reach for the elusive fruit – in this heat, it is important to harvest blackberries before they shrivel up and rot on the vine. I aim to gather more berries than scratches to prove that thorns and rot must never win and I will not yield to them.
Painful thorns and decay have always been part of life. They barricade us from all that is sweet and good and precious. They tear us up, bloody us, make us cry out in pain and grief, cause a stink, and deepen our fear that we may never overcome such a sorrowful destiny.
Yet even the most brutal crown of thorns or the rot of the grave did not stop the loving sacrifice, can never thwart the sweetness of redemption, will not spoil the goodness, nor destroy the promise of salvation to come.
We simply wait to be fed the loving gift that comes only from bloodied hands.
Flesh will fail and bones will break thieves will steal, the earth will shake Night will fall, the light will fade The Lord will give and take away
Put no trust in the earth in the sod you stand upon Flowers fade into dust The Lord will make a place for us
Because of His great Love We are not overcome Because of His great Love We are not overcome
Have no fear for your life Turn your cheek, turn your cheek Bear the yoke of love and death The Lord will give all life and breath
Because of His great Love We are not overcome Because of His great Love We are not overcome (from Bifrost Arts)
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To see clearly, not needing a drink or pill or puff of any pipe to know I’m alive. To come home, peel off sandals and step onto the cool tile floor needing only the rush of water over strawberries I picked myself and then a knife to trim the dusty green heads from each one, to watch them gleam cleanly in a colander in a patch of sun near the sink. ~James Crews “Clearly” from Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection
As a child, I could see some people I loved struggling with daily life like a never-ending wrestling match.
Can’t relax? Have a drink. Feeling irritable? Have a smoke. Can’t wake up? Strong coffee. Can’t lose weight? Amphetamines. Can’t sleep? Valium.
I watched as one after another after another lost the wrestling match with the life’s sharp edges, sometimes dying too young from their self-medication.
As a result, I never could reconcile experimenting with my brain, staying stone cold sober throughout 21 years of school, bored to tears at parties watching others get hammered and stoned. As a physician, I spent half my career trying to help people stop wrestling with life and find their sober selves again.
Like berries picked into a colander, we all need gentle handling, rinsing and hulling, to wash away the dust of the field, the spiders and slug slime.
No more wrestling. Restored to sweetness and sparkling beauty.
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