Tag: warmth

You’re the One

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If this comes creased and creased again and soiled
as if I’d opened it a thousand times
to see if what I’d written here was right,
it’s all because I looked too long for you
to put in your pocket. Midnight says
the little gifts of loneliness come wrapped
by nervous fingers. What I wanted this
to say was that I want to be so close
that when you find it, it is warm from me.
~Ted Kooser “Pocket Poem”

One who has loved is never quite alone,
though all the hills declare our solitude.
Having known you, I am no more afraid,
the essential singleness of blood and bone
when dispossessed, comes never in return;
one who has loved is never quite alone.
~Jane Tyson Clement “One Who Has Loved” from  The Heart’s Necessities

I never have left a poem in your pocket,
hoping it would stay warm from me.

Instead, to stave off loneliness
every morning I match poems and pictures together
here on this page, knowing you’ll see it later.
It’s not much but it’s the best I can do.

Hoping they stay warm to the touch,
these daily stories about how wonderful life is
spill from my fingertips
as dawn pours over the eastern hills

Here’s to another good morning with you, my love ~
I tuck this poem into your empty pocket,
to keep it close and forever warm
today, tomorrow and always.

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Frost of Adversity

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There is an arid Pleasure –
As different from Joy –
As Frost is different from Dew –
Like Element – are they –

Yet one – rejoices Flowers –
And one – the Flowers abhor –
The finest Honey – curdled –
Is worthless – to the Bee –
~Emily Dickinson

Remember the goodness of God in the frost of adversity.
~Charles Spurgeon

Even when hard times leave us frozen solid,
completely immobilized
and too cold to touch,
there is hope and healing,
in the warming immensity
of the goodness of God.

Even when life’s chill leaves us aching,
longing for relief,
the coming thaw is real
because God is good.

Even when we’re flattened,
stepped on, broken into fragments —
the pieces left are the beginning
of who we will become,
becoming whole again
because God is good.

Frost lasts not forever.
Sunlight makes us glisten and glitter
as ice melts down to droplets.
We are a reflection of the goodness of God:
His eyes and ears,
heart and soul,
hands and feet.
Even more so,
we become His tears
as God weeps in His goodness.

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Patchworks – Warm and Beautiful

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In your life, the people become like a patchwork quilt. Some leave with you a piece that is bigger than you wanted and others smaller than you thought you needed. Some are that annoying itchy square in the corner, and others that piece of worn flannel. You leave pieces with some and they leave their pieces with you. All the while each and every square makes up a part of what is you. Be okay with the squares people leave you. For life is too short to expect from people what they do not have to give, or were not called to give you.
~Anna M. Aquino

“I make them warm to keep my family from freezing; I make them beautiful to keep my heart from breaking.”
–From the journal of a prairie woman, 1870

To keep a husband and five children warm,
she quilts them covers thick as drifts against
the door. Through every fleshy square white threads
needle their almost invisible tracks; her hours
count each small suture that holds together
the raw-cut, uncolored edges of her life.
She pieces each one beautiful, and summer bright
to thaw her frozen soul. Under her fingers
the scraps grow to green birds and purple
improbable leaves; deeper than calico, her mid-winter
mind bursts into flowers. She watches them unfold
between the double stars, the wedding rings.
~Luci Shaw “Quiltmaker”

Like a fading piece of cloth
I am a failure

No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter
My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able
To hold the hot and cold

I wish for those first days
When just woven I could keep water
From seeping through
Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave
Dazzled the sunlight with my
Reflection

I grow old though pleased with my memories
The tasks I can no longer complete
Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past

I offer no apology only
this plea:

When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end
Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt
That I might keep some child warm

And some old person with no one else to talk to
Will hear my whispers

And cuddle
near
~Nikki Giovanni “Quilts”

We stitch together quilts of meaning to keep us warm and safe, with whatever patches of beauty and utility we have on hand.”
~Anne Lamott

When I no longer have strength
or the usefulness to perform my daily tasks,
piece me up and sew me into a greater whole
along with pieces of others who are fading.
We are so much better together,
so much more colorful and bold,
becoming art and function in our fraying state.

Full of warmth and beauty and fun
covering all who are sick and sleep
and love and cuddle,
and who drift off to heaven on a quilt-cloud
as their last breath is breathed.

~~click each quilt to enlarge and admire the handiwork~~

(thank you again to the quilters displaying their art at the NW Washington Fair in Lynden
(see previous years’ work here, here, here, here, and here )

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Good to Melt

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How exactly good it is
to know myself
in the solitude of winter,
my body containing its own
warmth, divided from all
by the cold; and to go
separate and sure
among the trees cleanly
divided, thinking of you
perfect too in your solitude,
your life withdrawn into
your own keeping
–to be clear, poised
in perfect self-suspension
toward you, as though frozen.
And having known fully the
goodness of that, it will be
good also to melt.
~Wendell Berry “The Cold” from New Collected Poems

It is too easy to find comfort in solitude
in yet another waning pandemic winter,
with trust and friendship eroded,
to stay protected one from another
by screens and windows and masks.

Standing apart can no longer be an option
as we long for reconnection;
the time has come for the melt,
for a re-blending of moments
full of meals and singing and hugs.

We’ll find our way out of the cold.
We’ll find our way to trust.
We’ll find our way back to one another.

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The Sun Spoke

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All afternoon by the window, sunlight—
that great soft hand on my head. I could hardly
move. And the sun spoke. It said, There now. 
Maybe your heart is wiser than you think.

Afternoon slowly rolled into evening.
I will listen for that voice all the days of my life.
~Annie Lighthart, “The Blessing” from  Pax

I seek His hand on my head when I need reassurance – that glowing warm sensation as sunbeams soak through my scalp and calm my overwrought neurons. I can’t help but close my eyelids and bathe in the feeling that all things are made new, myself included, and everything is going to be okay.

Even as the sun fades with the passage of hours in the day, the warmth within me remains. I remember the touch, I remember the wisdom, I remember the encouragement, I promise I won’t forget.

I’ll keep listening for His voice and know His hand rests on my head.

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What Did I Know?

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Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
~Robert Hayden “Those Winter Sundays”

As a child growing up,
I was oblivious
to the sacrifices my parents made
to keep the house warm,
place food on the table,
teaching us the importance of being steadfast,
to crack the door of opportunity open,
so we could walk through
to a better life
and we did.

It was no small offering
to keep dry seasoned fire and stove wood always at the doorstep,
to milk the cows twice a day,
to grow and preserve fruits and vegetables months in advance,
to raise and care for livestock,
to read books together every night,
to sit with us over homework
and drive us to 4H, Cub Scouts and Camp Fire,
to music lessons and sports,
to sit together for meals,
and never miss a Sunday
to worship God.

This was their love,
so often invisible,
too often imperfect,
yet its encompassing warmth
splintered and broke
the grip of cold
that can overwhelm and freeze
a family’s heart and soul.

What did I know? What did I know?
Too little then,
so much more now
yet still – never enough.

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Still Alive

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Awake the mind’s hopeless so
At a quarter to six I rise
And run 2 or 3 miles in
The pristine air of a dark
And windy winter morning
With a light rain falling
And no sound but the pad
Of my sneakers on the asphalt
And the calls of the owls in
The cypress trees on Mesa Road

And when I get back you’re
Still asleep under the warm covers
Because love is here to stay
It’s another day and we’re both still alive
~Tom Clark – “Every Day” from Light & Shade: New and Selected Poems.

How joyful to be together, alone
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know

each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to meet, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now

we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake

at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!
~Wendell Berry “The Blue Robe” from  New Collected Poem

These winter mornings –
waking early to part
from your warm side,
leaving behind my soft imprint,
I wrap up in my robe
to walk the gravel drive
to deliver a letter to our mailbox.

Our hilltop farm
lies silent amid fallow fields,
moon shadows
broad across my path
star sparks overhead
with orange paint beginning to lick
awake the eastern mountain peaks.

I walk noiselessly;
step out on the road
then turn ~ startled
as a flashlight approaches.

A walker and her dog
illuminate me in my dawn disarray
like a deer in headlights:
my ruffled hair, my sleep-lined face.
It is a grandma-caught-in-her-bathrobe
surprise at sunrise and
I’m simply glad to be alive.

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Promises to Keep

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Whose woods these are I think I know.   
His house is in the village though;   
He will not see me stopping here   
To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   
To stop without a farmhouse near   
Between the woods and frozen lake   
The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   
To ask if there is some mistake.   
The only other sound’s the sweep   
Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   
But I have promises to keep,   
And miles to go before I sleep,   
And miles to go before I sleep.
~Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost

I wish one
could press snowflakes
in a book
like flowers.
~James Schuyler from “February 13, 1975”

When a January night lingers long,
beginning too early and lasting too late,
I find myself in my own insistent winter,
wanting to hide away from trouble
deep in a peaceful snowy woods,
knowing I choose to avoid doing
what is needed
when it is needed.

I look inward
when I must focus outside myself.
I muffle my ears
to deafen voices crying in need.
I turn away
rather than meet a stranger’s gaze.

A wintry soul
is a cold and empty place,
not lovely, dark and deep.

I appeal to my Creator
who knows my darkness.
He expects me to keep my promises
because He keeps His promises.
His buds of hope and warmth
and color and fruit
will arise from my bare branches.

He brings me out of the night
to finish what He brought me here to do.

A book from Barnstorming combining the beauty of Lois Edstrom’s words and Barnstorming photography, available for order here:

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The Beginning Shall Remind Us of the End: Kindled and Consumed

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Earth’s crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning from “Aurora Leigh”

(Jesus said) I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!
Luke 12:49

It is difficult to undo our own damage…
It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind.
The very holy mountains are keeping mum.
We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it;
we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. 
~Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone to Talk

When I drink in the stars and upward sink
into the theater your words have wrought,
I touch unfelt immensity and think—
like Grandma used to pause in patient thought
before an ordinary flower, awed
by intricacies hidden in plain view,
then say, You didn’t have to do that, God!—
Surely a smaller universe would do!

But you have walled us in with open seas
unconquerable, wild with distant shores
whose raging dawns are but your filigree
across our vaulted skies. This art of yours,
what Grandma held and I behold, these flames,
frame truth which awes us more: You know our names.
~Michael Stalcup “The Shallows”

I need to turn aside and look,
to see, as if for the first and last time,
the kindled fire that illuminates
even the darkest day and never dies away.

We are invited by name,
by no less than God Himself,
through the burning bush that is never consumed
to shed our shoes, to walk barefoot and vulnerable,
and approach the bright and burning dawn,
even when it is the darkest midnight,
even when it is a babe in a manger
lighting a fire in each one of us.

Only then,
only then
can I say:
“Here I am! Consume me!”

This year’s Barnstorming Advent theme “… the Beginning shall remind us of the End” is taken from the final lines in T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees”

Within our darkest night,
you kindle the fire
that never dies away,
that never dies away.
Within our darkest night,
you kindle the fire
that never dies away,
that never dies away.
~Taize

I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen
of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see.
For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago
and people who will see a world that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.
~J.R.R. Tolkien

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The Barn Serious in the Moonlight

barnstormingblog3 Comments

After writing for a week alone in my old shack,
I guide the car through Ortonville around midnight.

The policeman talks intently in his swivel chair.
The light from above shines on his bald head.

Soon the car picks up speed again beside the quarries.
The moonspot on the steel tracks moves so fast!

Thirty or so Black Angus hold down their earth
Among silvery grasses blown back and forth in the wind.

My family is still away; no one is home.
How sweet it is to come back to an empty house—

The windows dark, no lamps lit, trees still,
The barn serious and mature in the moonlight.
~Robert Bly, “Living a Week Alone” from Like the New Moon, I Will Live My Life. 

Being introverted, I would expect to enjoy time alone. But I don’t. A conversation with myself is uninspiring, leading me back into the inner circle of my thoughts when I would much rather explore the unknown of another’s view of the world. Alone, I feel exceptionally unexceptional and extraordinarily ordinary. Quite simply, without others around me, I’m empty.

At night, when I drive up to our farm and see both house and barn glowing with lights and life rather than still and dark, it is a warm blessing to return home. Someone left the lights on for me.

I’ll leave the lights on for you as well.

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A book of beauty in words and photography – available for order here: