Tag: transition

Kicking Up Leaves

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Just as, when you keep watch
on the ground ahead of where your boots
kick up the leaves, the path
goes vague and blurred, while

if you lift your eyes the far
reach of the trail comes lucid
as map; so when you look
at tomorrow through next year,

the way, otherwise
so tangled and burdensome,
clears. And if the leaves
are, as they likely are,

fallen from the trees around you,
then you get to look
deeper into things
than spring allowed.
~Charles O. Hartman “Autumn Ordinance”

I remember it
as October days are always remembered,
cloudless, maple-flavored,
the air gold and so clean
it quivers.
~Leif Enger, from Peace Like a River 

The air tastes like autumn,
quivering on my tongue –
no need for pumpkin-spice flavoring
to feel the change.

Revel in the gold and bronze tint to the sky,
the cinnamon nutmeg dusting of the trees,
the heavy sprinkling of hanging dew drops,
the crisp and shivery breezes,
the new landscape peering through bony branches.

Soon the ground will be frosty instead of dusty,
leaving a crunchy carpet rather than shady veil.

October is always a much-needed transition,
keeping us fresh gazing at new horizons,
reminding us to breathe deeply when life feels shallow,
remembering we are immersed
in the glory of a new day we have never lived before.

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Where You Go, I Will Go: A Constant Who Never Changes

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When the moon scrapes past obscuring clouds,
there is the startle of pale-yellow light
escaping the sky onto the pasture, where
I walk my two young whippets in early spring
listening to chorus frogs shamelessly seeking
mates in the marsh-ponds spring rain has become
in my back pasture. And then coyotes too on the
far hill startling the dogs with their turbulent yips
joining the necessary summoning for more
of this tipping into spring, night-ascending prayers to
the moon and watching stars. But the moonlight’s
caught sounds of fecundity are deceiving—cold north wind
needles my cheeks, embraces my earlobes despite the
upturned hood on my too-thin jacket. A light frost
on pasture-grass licks against my winter chore boots. Despite the
whetted signs and sounds of approaching spring, there is
yet to be early crocus, daffodils filling the yard, or leaves
on the maple trees that will later shade the pigs in summer
now shivering in the night’s transition in the barnyard.
~Ed Higgins, “Transitions” from  Near Truth Only

Only another day until the spring equinox.

I confess to being impatient to transition away from winter, although we had snow and hail only a few days ago, our mornings are chilly with cold north breezes and our nights leave frosty icing on the barn roofs.

Even so, all the signs are there: the marsh frogs have been chorusing for nearly a month, coyotes are yipping it up, the pastures show a hint of green, early plum trees have broken open their tiny blossoms, crocus and daffodils have erupted in cheer and hope.

Some seasonal and life transitions are welcome.
Some not at all.
Some take my breath away.
One won’t give my breath back.

Whatever we face in this life, we will face it together,
knowing the arms of God surround us
when we’re weary,
when we’re ill,
when we’re discouraged.

His love is a sentinel beacon welcoming us home.

He is the constant when all else is in transition.

photo by Bob Tjoelker of our sentinel tree

Let nothing disturb thee,
Nothing affright thee;
All things are passing;
God never changeth;
Patient endurance attaineth to all things;
Who God possesseth in nothing is wanting;
Alone God sufficeth.
– St. Teresa of Avila “Prayer”

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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It Will Not Stay

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It will not stay.

But this morning we wake to pale muslin
stretched across the grass.
The pumpkins, still in the fields, are planets
shrouded by clouds.
The Weber wears a dunce cap
and sits in the corner by the garage
where asters wrap scarves
around their necks to warm their blooms.
The leaves, still soldered to their branches
by a frozen drop of dew, splash
apple and pear paint along the roadsides.
It seems we have glanced out a window
into the near future, mid-December, say,
the black and white photo of winter
carefully laid over the present autumn,
like a morning we pause at the mirror
inspecting the single strand of hair
that overnight has turned to snow.
~Robert Haight “Early October Snow”

No snow here in the northwest yet this fall, but when we visited family in Denver last year during the last week of October, heavy snow had fallen overnight, then gone within a day.

It did not stay. But it did return.

I can catch a glimpse of the future if I pay attention. Sometimes it is too painful to acknowledge, so I quickly look away. That one thick white hair discovered at age 28 is now a full head of thin white at 70.

I need to be courageous about looking straight ahead through the veil of snow at how change takes place, whether it is the melting piles on the pumpkins, or the mop of white in the mirror topping my wrinkles.

And so it goes and so it goes…

It is as it is meant to be. It is as it must be.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.

those white hairs…
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Approaching the End of September

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it rained in my sleep
and in the morning the fields were wet

I dreamed of artillery
of the thunder of horses

in the morning the fields were strewn
with twigs and leaves

as if after a battle
or a sudden journey

I went to sleep in the summer
I dreamed of rain

in the morning the fields were wet
and it was autumn
~Linda Pastan “September”

I can choose to fight the inevitable march of time
with sourness, sighs and sorrow,
thus arm myself with bitterness for what is no more,

or I can flow unmoved for as long as I can stay afloat,
barely aware of the passage of all taking place around me,

or I can smile at awaking each morning,
whether to sun or wind or rain and thunder,
grateful I’ve been given one more day to get it right,

or at least care enough to keep trying.

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Beautiful Changes

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One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides   
The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you   
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed   
By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;   
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves   
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says   
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes   
In such kind ways,   
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose   
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.
~Richard Wilbur “The Beautiful Changes”

I am changed again, as I blend into autumn.

We can’t help but be transformed by everything around us, you know.

Beautiful is the dying meadow, the shedding of dry reddened leaves,
the tidal wave of wildflowers nodding goodbye until next summer.

Beauty is beheld with wonder and then lost to the ages. We cannot change what we see, but treasure its transience, as we cherish our own brief moments here.

We hold on lightly, ready to let go when the time comes.
What comes next is beautiful beyond imagining.

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And So It Goes…

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Toward the end of August I begin to dream about fall, how
this place will empty of people, the air will get cold and
leaves begin to turn. Everything will quiet down, everything
will become a skeleton of its summer self. Toward

the end of August I get nostalgic for what’s to come, for
that quiet time, time alone, peace and stillness, calm, all
those things the summer doesn’t have. The woodshed is
already full, the kindling’s in, the last of the garden soon

will be harvested, and then there will be nothing left to do
but watch fall play itself out, the earth freeze, winter come.
~David Budbill “Toward the End of August”

As the calendar page flips to September this morning, I feel sad for what we leave behind, while knowing what is coming.

Summer is filled with so much overwhelming activity due to 18 hours of daylight accompanying weeks of unending sunny weather resulting in never-enough-sleep. Waking on a summer morning is brim full with possibilities: there are places to go, people who visit, new things to explore and of course, a garden and orchard bearing and fruiting out of control.

As early September days usher us toward autumn, our older grandchildren will adjust to a more predictable routine of school days, ripe with learning opportunities. Great teachers will lead them into vast new worlds of knowledge.

My teacher friend Bonnie coordinates an innovative introduction to fifth grade by asking her students, with some parental assistance, to make (from scratch) their own personalized school desks that will go home with them at the end of the school year. These students create their own learning center with both brains and hands, applying wood-burned and painted designs, with inspirational quotes for daily encouragement. Their desks represent a solid reminder of what they leave behind each year, while striving to become something new.

And so it goes, year after year.

I am wistful about September’s quiet commencement despite no school or job to return to. There is a cool freshness in the air as breezes begin to pluck and toss a few drying leaves from the trees. 

I watch the days play themselves out. No longer do I feel I must direct each moment. 

And so it goes, and so it goes.
And you are the only one who knows.

Mrs. Bonnie Patterson’s fifth graders’ handmade desks
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Hearts and Voices Sing: Anticipate Revival

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March. I am beginning
to anticipate a thaw. Early mornings
the earth, old unbeliever, is still crusted with frost
where the moles have nosed up their
cold castings, and the ground cover
in shadow under the cedars hasn’t softened
for months, fogs layering their slow, complicated ice
around foliage and stem
night by night,

but as the light lengthens, preacher
of good news, evangelizing leaves and branches,
his large gestures beckon green
out of gray. Pinpricks of coral bursting
from the cotoneasters. A single bee
finding the white heather. Eager lemon-yellow
aconites glowing, low to the ground like
little uplifted faces. A crocus shooting up
a purple hand here, there, as I stand
on my doorstep, my own face drinking in heat
and light like a bud welcoming resurrection,
and my hand up, too, ready to sign on
for conversion.
~Luci Shaw “Revival” from What the Light was Like

The earth invalid, dropsied, bruised, wheeled
Out in the sun,
After frightful operation.
She lies back, wounds undressed to the sun,
To be healed,
Sheltered from the sneapy chill creeping North wind,
Leans back, eyes closed, exhausted, smiling
Into the sun. Perhaps dozing a little.
While we sit, and smile, and wait, and know
She is not going to die. 
~Ted Hughes from ” A March Morning Unlike Others” from Ted Hughes. Collected Poems

Spring is emerging slowly from this haggard and droopy winter. All growing things are still stuck in morning frost for another week at least. Then, like the old “Wizard of Oz” movie, the landscape will suddenly turn from monochrome to technicolor, the soundtrack from forlorn to glorious birdsong.

Yearning for spring to commence, I tap my foot impatiently as if owed a timely seasonal transformation from dormant to verdant.  We all have been waiting for the Physician’s announcement that this patient survived some intricate life-changing procedure: “I’m happy to say the Earth is alive after all, now revived and restored, wounded but healing, breathing on her own but too sedated for a visit just yet.”

I wait impatiently to celebrate her return to health, knowing this temporary home of ours is still very much alive. She breathes, she thrives, blooming and singing with everything she’s got.
And so will I.

He sends his command to the earth;
    his word runs swiftly.
16 He spreads the snow like wool
    and scatters the frost like ashes.
17 He hurls down his hail like pebbles.
    Who can withstand his icy blast?
18 He sends his word and melts them;
    he stirs up his breezes, and the waters flow.
Psalm 147: 15-18

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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Raking and Piling the Past

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I.
Cats pad from one sun-warmed
stone to another. Bees lament
the sweet ripe fruit

denied by spring’s late hard frost.
Birds stow mating calls
for another season.

Clouds scribble pithy prose,
criss-cross pages surrendered
by autumn’s azure.

Flower beds brown as they thin
and cricket song stitches  
a coverlet against evening chill.

II.
In my first autumn at home
since I was three
I rustle leaves at my feet
like a past I can rake and pile.
Energized by autumn’s aura
I glean clarity
of what lies fallow
and what I’ve put up for my winter.
~Nancy Jentsch “October Afternoon”

Out through the fields and the woods
   And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
   And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
   And lo, it is ended.
 
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
   Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
   And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
   When others are sleeping.
 
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
   No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
   The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
   But the feet question ‘Whither?’
 
Ah, when to the heart of man
   Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
   To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
   Of a love or a season?
~Robert Frost “Reluctance”

As I kick through piles of fallen leaves in the barnyard, I realize how close I am to becoming one of them. Within my own changing seasons, I have flourished and bloomed and fruited, but am now reminded of my fading, withering and eventual letting go.

I find I’m not nearly so bold anymore, instead trembling nervously when harsh winds blow me about, hoping the roots I’ve always depended upon will continue to nourish and sustain me.

This time of year, everything feels transitory — especially me.

When these thoughts overwhelm, I tend to hang on tighter rather than simply giving up and letting go. My feet stumble when I try to do the same tasks I did so smoothly years ago. I’m stubbornly wanting things to stay the same, reluctant for a transition to something different.

My only solace is that the heart of man — indeed my own hole-y heart — is transient compared to the holy Heart of the Creator. I am sustained by His steady Pulse, His ubiquitous Circulation, His impeccable Rhythm of Life and Death.

In that I trust.
In that I come to abandon my stubborn reluctance.

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The Secrets of September

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The golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.

The gentian’s bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.

The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook.

From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes’ sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer’s best of weather,
And autumn’s best of cheer.

But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.

‘Tis a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget.
~Helen Hunt Jackson “September“

I can choose to fight the inevitable march of time with sighs and sorrows, thus arm myself with sour bitterness for what is no more,

or I can flow unmoved for as long as I can stay afloat,
only passively aware of the passage of all around me,

or I can smile in secret at awakening each morning,
whether to sun or wind or rain,
grateful I’ve been given one more day to get it right,

or at least to care enough to try.

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Trying to Yield to Change

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I went out to cut a last batch of zinnias this
morning from the back fencerow and got my shanks
chilled for sure: furrowy dark gray clouds with
separating fringes of blue sky-grass: and the dew

beaded up heavier than the left-overs of the rain:
in the zinnias, in each of two, a bumblebee
stirring in slow motion. Trying to unwind
the webbed drug of cold, buzzing occasionally but

with a dry rattle: bees die with the burnt honey
at their mouths, at least: the fact’s established:
it is not summer now and the simmering buzz is out of
heat: the zucchini blossoms falling show squash

overgreen with stunted growth: the snapdragons have
suckered down into a blossom or so: we passed
into dark last week the even mark of day and night
and what we hoped would stay we yield to change.
~A.R. Ammons  “Equinox” from Complete Poems

I yield now
to the heaviness of transition
from summer to autumn,
with slowing of my walk
and darkening of my days.

It is time;
day and night now compete for my attention
and both will win.

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