The songs of small birds fade away into the bushes after sundown, the air dry, sweet with goldenrod. Beside the path, suddenly, bright asters flare in the dusk. The aged voices of a few crickets thread the silence. It is a quiet I love, though my life too often drives me through it deaf. Busy with costs and losses, I waste the time I have to be here—a time blessed beyond my deserts, as I know, if only I would keep aware. The leaves rest in the air, perfectly still. I would like them to rest in my mind as still, as simply spaced. As I approach, the sorrel filly looks up from her grazing, poised there, light on the slope as a young apple tree. A week ago I took her away to sell, and failed to get my price, and brought her home again. Now in the quiet I stand and look at her a long time, glad to have recovered what is lost in the exchange of something for money. ~Wendell Berry “The Sorrel Filly”
I am reminded at the end of a week of dark and wet and cold with chores not done yet, and horses waiting to be fed, of the value of decades of moments spent with long-lashed eyes, wind-swept manes, and velvet muzzles.
True, it appears to others to be time and money wasted. But for a farmer like me, sometimes deaf and blind to what is in front of me every day, not all valuables are preserved in a lock box.
Golden treasure can have four hooves, a tail, with a rumbling greeting asking if I’d somehow gotten lost since I’m a little later than usual and they were a bit concerned I’d forgotten them.
Only then I remember where my home is and how easy it is to wander from the path that somehow always leads me back here.
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The cat calls for her dinner. On the porch I bend and pour brown soy stars into her bowl, stroke her dark fur. It’s not quite night. Pinpricks of light in the eastern sky. Above my neighbor’s roof, a transparent moon, a pink rag of cloud. Inside my house are those who love me. My daughter dusts biscuit dough. And there’s a man who will lift my hair in his hands, brush it until it throws sparks. Everything is just as I’ve left it. Dinner simmers on the stove. Glass bowls wait to be filled with gold broth. Sprigs of parsley on the cutting board. I want to smell this rich soup, the air around me going dark, as stars press their simple shapes into the sky. I want to stay on the back porch while the world tilts toward sleep, until what I love misses me, and calls me in. ~Dorianne Laux “On the Back Porch” from Awake
They sit together on the porch, the dark Almost fallen, the house behind them dark. Their supper done with, they have washed and dried The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses, Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two. She sits with her hands folded in her lap, At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak, And when they speak at last it is to say What each one knows the other knows. They have One mind between them, now, that finally For all its knowing will not exactly know Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone. ~Wendell Berry “They Sit Together on the Porch”
If just for a moment, when the world feels like it is tilting so far I just might fall off, there is a need to pause to look at where I’ve been and get my feet back under me.
The porch is a good place to start: a bridge to what exists beyond without completely leaving the safety of inside.
I am outside looking square at uncertainty and still hear and smell and taste the love that dwells just inside these walls.
What could we want more than to be missed if we were to step away and taken from this life?
Our voice, our words, our heart, our touch never to be replaced, its absence a hole impossible to fill?
When we are called back inside to Love that made us who we are, may the “in between” of time spent on the porch, be left more beautiful because we were part of it.
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How long does it take to make the woods? As long as it takes to make the world. The woods is present as the world is, the presence of all its past, and of all its time to come. It is always finished, it is always being made, the act of its making forever greater than the act of its destruction. It is a part of eternity, for its end and beginning belong to the end and beginning of all things, the beginning lost in the end, the end in the beginning.
What is the way to the woods, how do you go there? By climbing up through the six days’ field, kept in all the body’s years, the body’s sorrow, weariness, and joy. By passing through the narrow gate on the far side of that field where the pasture grass of the body’s life gives way to the high, original standing of the trees. By coming into the shadow, the shadow of the grace of the strait way’s ending, the shadow of the mercy of light.
Why must the gate be narrow? Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened. To come in among these trees you must leave behind the six days’ world, all of it, all of its plans and hopes. You must come without weapon or tool, alone, expecting nothing, remembering nothing, into the ease of sight, the brotherhood of eye and leaf. ~Wendell Berry, “Sabbath 1985 V”
We who live in the six day world, walking the six day path to the narrow gate forget too quickly about the seventh day Sabbath. The meaning of our existence is not defined by how much we accomplish in the week, or how capable we are at carrying our burdens.
We are invited to walk through the narrow way, where worries and heavy loads cannot fit the opening.
Passing through shadow is part of reaching the light. The mercy of the shadow is — then we know light exists.
Light beyond shadow, Joy beyond tears, Love that is greater when darkest our fears; deeper the Peace when the storm is around, nearer the Hope to the lost who is found. Light of the world, ever shining, shining!
Hope in our pain and our dying. in our darkness, there is Light, in our crying, there is Love, in the noise of life imparting Peace that passes understanding.
Light beyond shadow, Joy beyond tears, Love that is greater when darkest our fears; deeper the Peace when the storm is around, nearer the Hope to the lost who is found. -Paul Wigmore
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Photo of Aaron Janicki haying with his Oberlander team in Skagit County courtesy of Tayler RaeBenjamin Janicki of Sedro Woolley raking hay with his team of Oberlanders
Travel as a backward step. You journey until you find a meadow where wildflowers grow with pre-factory-farming copiousness, a horse-drawn landscape where hay is saved in older ways, to revive the life you lived once, catch up with your past. ~Dennis O’Driscoll from Time Pieces (2002)
… The Amish have maintained what I like to think is a proper scale, largely by staying with the horse. The horse has restricted unlimited expansion. Not only does working with horses limit farm size, but horses are ideally suited to family life. With horses you unhitch at noon to water and feed the teams and then the family eats what we still call dinner. While the teams rest there is usually time for a short nap. And because God didn’t create the horse with headlights, we don’t work nights. Amish farmer David Kline in Great Possessions
photo by Tayler Rae
One evening I stopped by the field to watch the hay rake drawn toward me by two black, tall, ponderous horses who stepped like conquerors over the fallen oat stalks, light-shot dust at their heels, long shadows before them. At the ditch the driver turned back in a wide arc, the off-horse scrambling, the near-horse pivoting neatly. The big side-delivery rake came about with a shriek— its tines were crashing, the iron-bound tongue groaned aloud— then, Hup, Diamond! Hup, Duke! and they set off west, trace-deep in dust, going straight into the low sun.
The clangor grew faint, distance and light consumed them; a fiery chariot rolled away in a cloud of gold and faded slowly, brightness dying into brightness. The groaning iron, the prophesying wheels, the mighty horses with their necks like storms— all disappeared; nothing was left but a track of dust that climbed like smoke up the evening wind. ~Kate Barnes “The Hay Rake” from Where the Deer Are
My grandparents owned the land, worked the land, bound to the earth by seasons of planting and harvest.
They watched the sky, the habits of birds, hues of sunset, the moods of moon and clouds, the disposition of air. They inhaled the coming season, let it brighten their blood for the work ahead.
Soil sifted through their fingers imbedded beneath their nails and this is what they knew; this rhythm circling the years. They never left their land; each in their own time settled deeper. ~Lois Parker Edstrom “Almanac” from Night Beyond Black.
Nearing 68, I am old enough to have parents who both grew up on farms worked by horses, one raising wheat and lentils in the Palouse country of eastern Washington and the other logging in the woodlands of Fidalgo Island of western Washington. The horses were crucial to my grandfathers’ success in caring for and tilling the land, seeding and harvesting the crops and bringing supplies from town miles away. Theirs was a hardscrabble life in the early 20th century with few conveniences. Work was year round from dawn to dusk; caring for the animals came before any human comforts. Once night fell, work ceased and sleep was welcome respite for man and beast.
In the rural countryside where we live now, we’ve been fortunate enough to know people who still dabble in horse farming, whose draft teams are hitched to plows and mowers and manure spreaders as they head out to the fields to recapture the past. Watching a good team work with no diesel motor running means hearing bird calls from the field, the steady footfall of the horses, the harness chains jingling, the leather straps creaking, the machinery shushing quietly as gears turn and grass lays over in submission. No ear protection is needed. There is no clock needed to pace the day. There is a rhythm of nurture when animals instead of engines are part of the work day. The gauge for taking a break is the amount of foamy sweat on the horses and how fast they are breathing.It is time to stop and take a breather, it is time to start back up do a few more rows, it is time to water, it is time for a meal, it is time for a nap, it is time for a rest in a shady spot. This is gentle use of the land with four footed stewards who deposit right back to the soil the digested forage they have eaten only hours before.
Our modern agribusiness megafarm fossil-fuel-powered approach to food production has bypassed the small family farm which was so dependent on the muscle power of humans and animals. In our move away from horses worked by skilled teamsters, what has been gained in high production values has meant loss of self-sufficiency and dedicated stewardship of a particular plot of ground. Draft breeds, including the Haflinger horses we raise, now are bred for higher energy with lighter refined bone structure meant more for eye appeal and floating movement, rather than the sturdy conformation and unflappable low maintenance mindset needed for pulling work. Modern children are bred for different purpose as well, no longer raised to work together with other family members for a common purpose of daily survival. Their focus at school is waning as they have no morning farm chores when they get up, too little physical work to do before they arrive at their desks in the morning. Their physical energy, if directed at all, is directed to competitive sports, engaged in fantasy combat rather than winning a very real victory over hunger.
I am encouraged when young people still reach for horse collars and bridles, hitch up their horses and do the work as it used to be done. All is not lost if we can still make incremental daily progress, harnessed together as a team with our horses, tilling for truth and harvesting hope.
photo by Joel DeWaardphoto by Joel DeWaard
I like farming. I like the work. I like the livestock and the pastures and the woods. It’s not necessarily a good living, but it’s a good life. I now suspect that if we work with machines the world will seem to us to be a machine, but if we work with living creatures the world will appear to us as a living creature. That’s what I’ve spent my life doing, trying to create an authentic grounds for hope. ~Wendell Berry, horse farmer, essayist, poet, professor
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Sometimes hidden from me in daily custom and in trust, so that I live by you unaware as by the beating of my heart,
suddenly you flare in my sight, a wild rose looming at the edge of thicket, grace and light where yesterday was only shade,
and once again I am blessed, choosing again what I chose before. ~Wendell Berry “The Wild Rose”
Due to past harsh winter weather, we have lost a couple of our hybrid rose bushes which were grafted to rootstock when we purchased them. The durable rootstock survives when the bush does not, sending up shoots and branches to thrive and bloom, opening a wild rose blossom with a fresh loveliness all its own, even if it is not the exact color, fragrance or type rose we intended originally. It is still a blessing.
Although Wendell Berry wrote “A Wild Rose” about his wife – about a moment of illumination within a long covenantal marriage – I have experienced “choosing” again “what I chose before” in a renewal of relationship and commitment with God.
I too often settle so thoroughly into routine, oblivious to the privilege of another day of living this life. I am unaware of the miracle of my own beating heart. When the scales do lift from my eyes, I see beauty emerge from the shadows, and I am renewed.
In my own marriage, our relationship has survived over four decades through good and difficult times. Yet we are grafted to a rootstock God who never gives up.
And so we bloom from and for Him – a wild and unforgettable blessing.
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Light and wind are running over the headed grass as though the hill had melted and now flowed. ~Wendell Berry “June Wind” from New Collected Poems
The rain to the wind said, ‘You push and I’ll pelt.’ They so smote the garden bed That the flowers actually knelt, And lay lodged–though not dead. I know how the flowers felt. ~Robert Frost “Lodged”
All that I serve will die, all my delights, the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field, the silent lilies standing in the woods, the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all will burn in man’s evil, or dwindle in its own age. Let the world bring on me the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know my little light taken from me into the seed of the beginning and the end, so I may bow to mystery, and take my stand on the earth like a tree in a field, passing without haste or regret toward what will be, my life a patient willing descent into the grass. ~Wendell Berry “The Wish to be Generous” from Collected Poems
The abundant grasses in the surrounding hay fields were hit hard with heavy rainfall and wind yesterday, collapsing under the weight of the pelting moisture. Countless four foot tall tender stems are now lodged and flattened in undulating bent-over waves of green, embracing the earth from which they arose. If the rain continues as predicted over the next several days, the grass may not recover, unable to dry out enough to stand upright again, nor are the fields dry enough to bring tractors and equipment to the rescue.
It is ironic to lose a crop from too much of a good thing– lush growth demands, but often cannot withstand, quenching rains. It has matured too fast, rising up too lush, too overcome with itself so that it can no longer stand. The grass keels over in community, broken and crumpled, likely now unsuitable for cutting or baling into hay, and unless chopped quickly into silage to ferment for winter cattle feed, it must melt back into the soil again.
However–if there are dry spells amid the showers over the next few days, with a breeze to lift the soaked heads and squeeze out the wet sponge created by layered forage–the lodged crop may survive and rise back up. It may be raised and lifted again, pushing up to meet the sun, its stems strengthening and straightening.
What once was so heavy laden and down-trodden might lighten; what was silent could once again move and sing and wave with the wind.
The hill pasture, an open place among the trees, tilts into the valley. The clovers and tall grasses are in bloom. Along the foot of the hill dark floodwater moves down the river. The sun sets. Ahead of nightfall the birds sing. I have climbed up to water the horses and now sit and rest, high on the hillside, letting the day gather and pass. Below me cattle graze out across the wide fields of the bottomlands, slow and preoccupied as stars. In this world men are making plans, wearing themselves out, spending their lives, in order to kill each other. ~Wendell Berry “In This World” from Farming: A Handbook
What stood will stand, though all be fallen, The good return that time has stolen. Though creatures groan in misery, Their flesh prefigures liberty To end travail and bring to birth Their new perfection in new earth. At word of that enlivening Let the trees of the woods all sing And every field rejoice, let praise Rise up out of the ground like grass. What stood, whole in every piecemeal Thing that stood, will stand though all Fall–field and woods and all in them Rejoin the primal Sabbath’s hymn. ~Wendell Berry, from “Sabbaths” (North Point Press, 1987).
From The Nicene Creed
Et expecto resurrectionem motuorum. Et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen. Alleluia.
And I look for the resurrection of the dead, And the life of the world to come. Amen. Alleluia
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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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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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Again I resume the long lesson: how small a thing can be pleasing, how little in this hard world it takes to satisfy the mind and bring it to its rest.
Within the ongoing havoc the woods this morning is almost unnaturally still. Through stalled air, unshadowed light, a few leaves fall of their own weight.
The sky is gray. It begins in mist almost at the ground and rises forever. The trees rise in silence almost natural, but not quite, almost eternal, but not quite.
What more did I think I wanted? Here is what has always been. Here is what will always be. Even in me, the Maker of all this returns in rest, even to the slightest of His works, a yellow leaf slowly falling, and is pleased. ~Wendell Berry “VII”
What more did I think I wanted?
To know that as long as I’m able to hold on, I can be a spot of light in a dark and bleak world. Once I let go, it is finished and worthwhile, seeing His knowing smile.
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Horseback on Sunday morning, harvest over, we taste persimmon and wild grape, sharp sweet of summer’s end. In time’s maze over fall fields, we name names that went west from here, names that rest on graves. We open a persimmon seed to find the tree that stands in promise, pale, in the seed’s marrow. Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here. ~Wendell Berry “Wild Geese”from Collected Poems 1957-1982
I hear them coming before I see them: the wild geese flying overhead, noisily honking their way across an autumn sky, drawn to the harvested cornfields to glean after the machinery has left.
Soon they will leave altogether, pulled to be content somewhere else.
I remain as witness rather than move on, reminding myself, my heart quiet, my eye clear, what I need is here until it is my turn to leave.
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