Tag: withering

A Fading Rainbow of Hues

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Like in old cans of paint the last green hue,
these leaves are sere and rough and dull-complected
behind the blossom clusters in which blue
is not so much displayed as it’s reflected;

They do reflect it imprecise and teary,
as though they’d rather have it go away,
and just like faded, once blue stationery,
they’re tinged with yellow, violet and gray;

As in an often laundered children’s smock,
cast off, its usefulness now all but over,
one senses running down a small life’s clock.

Yet suddenly the blue revives, it seems,
and in among these clusters one discovers
a tender blue rejoicing in the green.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Blue Hydrangea” Translation by Bernhard Frank

… I’m tethered, and devoted
to your raw and lonely bloom

my lavish need to drink
your world of crowded cups to fill.
~Tara Bray “hydrangea” from Image Journal

Dwelling within a mosaic of dying colors,
these petals fold and collapse
under the weight of the sky’s tears.

This hydrangea bears a rainbow of hues,
once-vibrant promises of blue
now fading to rusts and grays.

I know what this is like:
the running out of the clock,
feeling the limits of vitality.

Withering and drying,
I’m drawn, thirsty for the beauty,
to this waning artist’s palette.

To quench my thirst:
from an open cup, an invitation,
an everlasting visual sacrament.

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How Generous the Ground

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Once again, the field rehearses how to die.
Some of the grass turns golden first. Some
simply fades into brown. Just this morning,
I, too, lay in corpse pose, practicing
how to let myself be totally held by the earth
without striving, how to meet the day
without rushing off to do the next necessary
or beautiful thing. Soon, the grass will bend
or break, molder or disintegrate. Every year,
the same lesson in how to join the darkness,
how to be unmade, how quietly
we might lean into the uncertainty,
how generous the ground.
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “Shavasana”

The prairie grasses are collapsing,
withering to the ground,
all spent after a season of flourishing.
The next wind and rain storm will finish the job.
Stems and leaves become rich compost
in the seasons that follow,
a generous bed for future seeds.

We expect this fading away.

I know it doesn’t mean the end –
there is still vitality lying dormant,
hidden away, waiting for the right moment
to re-emerge, resurrect and live again.

I know this too about myself.
The dying-time-of-year doesn’t get easier.
It seems more real-time and vivid.
Colors fade, leaves wrinkle and dry,
fruit falls unconsumed and softened. 

Our beauty, so evident only a short time ago,
is meant to thrive inward, germinating,
ready to rise again when called forth.

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Wa-hoo and Ye-Hah

barnstormingblog2 Comments

pinecurls

witheriris2

witherrose

octleaf1

rainypond

barnyew

So much gloom and doubt in our poetry-
flowers wilting on the table,
the self regarding itself in a watery mirror.

Dead leaves cover the ground,
the wind moans in the chimney,
and the tendrils of the yew tree inch toward the coffin.

I wonder what the ancient Chinese poets
would make of all this,
these shadows and empty cupboards?

Today, with the sun blazing in the trees,
my thoughts turn to the great
tenth-century celebrator of experience,

Wa-Hoo, whose delight in the smallest things
could hardly be restrained,
and to his joyous counterpart in the western provinces,
Ye-Hah.
~Billy Collins “Despair”

shadow6

So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear… The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels… never concealed His tears. Yet He concealed something… He never restrained His anger… Yet He restrained something… There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or imperious isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
G.K. Chesterton in his closing words of Orthodoxy

 

There is humor in the Bible –irony, puns, absurdities, parodies, paradox–yet we miss hearing the laughter of the heavens as we are simply too close to the joke to get it.  In fact, we are likely the punch line of the joke more often than not.  God shows remarkable restraint when it comes to observing the hilarious antics of His children.  We don’t see verses such as, “Jesus laughed” or “Jesus smiled” or “Jesus stifled a chuckle”  even though He surely had plenty of opportunity. He was too gracious to laugh at us so surely He laughed with us.

We often take ourselves too seriously.   A little joy can’t hurt.

A lot of joy is hearing the laughter of heaven itself.

Wa-Hoo and Ye-Hah!

woodsonfire

poplargold

noseys

Happiness is a Chewbacca Mask

Send Rain

barnstormingblog3 Comments

redsquare

See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build — but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.

Mine, O thou Lord of life, send my roots rain
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Thou art indeed just, Lord”

As I look out through a tear-streaked window at the beginning of this dark day,
I fear I’m inadequate to the task before me.
Parched and struggling patients line my schedule;
they are anxious and already weary and barren, seeking something, anything
to ease their distress in a hostile world,
preferably an easy pill to swallow.
Nothing that hurts going down.

While others are thriving around them, they wilt and wither, wishing to die.

Lord of Life, equip me to find the words to say that might help.
May it be about more than genetics, neurotransmitters and physiology.

In this dry season for young lives, send your penetrating rain.
Reach down and shake our roots
fiercely
and slake our thirst.

rain6

morningrain