Tag: writing

Rummaging Among Clouds

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The fields are snowbound no longer;
There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green.
The snow has been caught up into the sky—
So many white clouds—and the blue of the sky is cold.
Now the sun walks in the forest,
He touches the boughs and stems with his golden fingers;
They shiver, and wake from slumber.
Over the barren branches he shakes his yellow curls. …
Yet is the forest full of the sound of tears….
A wind dances over the fields.
Shrill and clear the sound of her waking laughter,
Yet the little blue lakes tremble
And the flags of tenderest green bend and quiver.
~Katherine Mansfield “Very Early Spring”

You might say that clouds have no nationality
Being flags of no country, flaunting their innocent neutrality
Across frontiers, ignorant of boundaries;
But these clouds are clearly foreign, such an exotic clutter
Against the blue cloth of the sky
I want to rummage among them, I want to turn them over
With eager fingers, I want to bargain
For this one or that one, I want to haggle and dicker
Over the prices, and I want to see my clouds wrapped up
In sheets of old newspapers, and give them away
To young girls to pin in their hair
Or tuck them, glossy as gardenias, behind an ear,
Or stretch one out to the length of a lacy shawl
And toss it over a shoulder, or around a waist.
~Constance Urdang “Clouds”

Our farm sits about 9 miles from an international border. The sky and clouds are oblivious to the line drawn by two governments, and don’t bother to stop at the border stations controlling access of humans across that line.

The clouds are free to go where they please, so they do, while we watch. They are both a foreign and domestic cloud of witnesses to our earthbound follies and foolishness.

No passports or IDs, no being pulled into “secondary” for more intensive searches and questioning, no being “turned back” not allowed across, no deportations.

They simply float and glide where the breezes take them, assuming whatever shape, identity or characteristics they wish.

What a beautiful day in the neighborhood if one happens to be a cloud or a cloud of witnesses…

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Constant and Changeable

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Light changes slowly with subtle words
such as cautious and determined,
marking a demarcation line across the horizon,
delineating between day and night
taking over the sky. Drakes in the wetlands
are excited by the transformation.

In daylight, the moon is a white wafer.
Perception only amazes
the participant who never notices
the daily occurrences with minor variations.

What difference are the blending shades,
clouds wheeling like hawks, the way light
haunches on the edge while day begins or ends.
There is always this anticipation of the differences,
and the end results are that our expectations are met—

not in color or uncertain times for the transfers
but in the way no two days begin or end the same.
For thousands of years, the universe has palpitated,
expanded, and contracted like a heart
with such restlessness we barely notice
what is plain to the eye: the universe is constant
and changeable. We barely break the surface
of observation, and when we do, we take for granted
the drakes will migrate when marshes are ice-tinged,
and the drakes will return when spring returns,
never considering it might be otherwise.
~Martin Willitts Jr., “Transformation” from Leave Nothing Behind

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
~Jane Kenyon “Otherwise”

No two days begin or end the same way.
It is my privilege to watch and take note.

I spent much of seven decades barely noticing, absorbed in all but what transpired right beneath my feet and over my head.

Now I take the time and effort to appreciate each day’s uniqueness and share what I see and hear and feel.

Yes, palpitations in the world and within me catch my breath.
There is expansion and contraction
and some moments of skipped beats.

The point is that the beat goes on.

I’ll never take transformation for granted again.
I welcome it, even as it focuses and fascinates and frightens me.
I am well aware, now ever aware,
it always could be otherwise.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

English translation:

Hear, smith of the heavens,
what the poet asks.
May softly come unto me
thy mercy.
So I call on thee,
for thou hast created me.
I am thy slave,
thou art my Lord.

God, I call on thee
to heal me.
Remember me, mild one,
most we need thee.
Drive out, O king of suns,
generous and great,
human every sorrow
from the city of the heart.

Watch over me, mild one,
most we need thee,
truly every moment
in the world of men.
Send us, son of the virgin,
good causes,
all aid is from thee,
in my heart.

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Where You Go, I Will Go: A Place of Retreat

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… Maybe they have
no place to return or are lost,
having gone too far from the nest.

Female bees will also burrow
deep inside the shade of a squash
flower: the closer to the source
of nectar, the warmer and more
quilt-like the air. In the cool
hours of morning, look closely
for the slight but tell-tale
trembling in each flower cup:
there, a body dropped mid-flight,
mid-thought. How we all retreat
behind some folded screen as work
or the world presses in too
soon, too close, too much.
~Luisa Igloria from “Ode to Tired Bumblebees Who Fall Asleep Inside Flowers With Pollen on Their Butts”

How can I love this spring
when it’s pulling me
through my life faster
than any time before it?
When five separate dooms
are promised this decade
and here I am, just trying
to watch a bumblebee cling
to its first purple flower.
I cannot save this world.
But look how it’s trying,
once again, to save me.
~James Pearson “This Spring”

It isn’t unusual to find a bumblebee clinging to a spring blossom, all covered in morning dew, having overstayed its welcome as the evening chill hit the night before.

The bumble is too cold to fly, or think, or navigate. Instead it just clings through the night until the sun rises and the air once again warms its wings.

Maybe it got lost.
Maybe it is simply weary from flying with such tiny wings.
Maybe it has no home to retreat to in the darkness.
Maybe it only wants to cling tight to beauty in a dangerous world.

I’ve known what this feels like, dear plump fluffy bumble.
I think I know how you feel,
patiently waiting for the descent of Love to revive my spirit
and warm my wings…

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Find Out Where You Belong

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I wanted to treat feelings that are not recognized as afflictions and are never diagnosed by doctors. All those little feelings and emotions no therapist is interested in,
because they are apparently too minor and intangible.
The feeling that washes over you
when another summer nears its end.
Or when you recognize that you haven’t got your whole life left to find out where you belong.
Or the slight sense of grief when a friendship
doesn’t develop as you thought,
and you have to continue your search for a lifelong companion.
Or those birthday morning blues.
Nostalgia for the air of your childhood.
Things like that.
~Nina George from The Little Paris Bookshop

Are you so weary? Come to the window;
Lean, and look at this —
Something swift runs under the grass
With a little hiss . . . 

Now you see it ripping off,
Reckless, under the fence.
Are you so tired? Unfasten your mind,
And follow it hence.
~Mark Van Doren “Wind in the Grass”

A white vase holds a kaleidoscope of wilting sweet peas
captive in the sunlight on the kitchen table while

wafting morning scent of pancakes
with sticky maple syrup swirls on the plate,

down the hall a dirty diaper left too long in the pail,
spills over tempera paint pots with brushes rinsed in jars after

stroking bright pastel butterflies fluttering on an easel
while wearing dad’s oversized shirt buttoned backwards

as he gently guides a hand beneath the downy underside
of the muttering hen reaching a warm egg hiding in the nest

broken into fragments like a heart while reading
the last stanza of “Dover Beach” in freshman English

Just down the hall of clanging lockers
To orchestra where strains of “Clair de Lune” accompany

the yearning midnight nipple tug of a baby’s hungry suck
hiccups gulping in rhythm to the rocking rocking

waiting for a last gasp for breath
through gaping mouth, mottled cooling skin

lies still between bleached sheets
illuminated by curtain filtered moonlight just visible

through the treetops while whoosh of owl wings
are felt not heard, sensed not seen.

Waking to bright lights and whirring machines
the hushed voice of the surgeon asking

what do you see now, what can you hear, what odor,
what flavor, what sensation on your skin

with each probe of temporal lobe, of fornix
and amygdala hidden deep in gray matter

of neurons and synaptic holding bins of chemical transmitters
storing the mixed bag of the past and present

to find and remove the offending lesion that seizes up
all remembrance, all awareness

and be set free again to live, to love, to swoon at the perfume
of spring sweet peas climbing dew fresh at dawn,

tendril wrapping over tendril,
the peeling wall of the garden shed

no more regrets, no more grief
no more sorrow.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: My Heart Caught Off Guard

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And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
~Seamus Heaney “Postscript” from The Spirit Level

…they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.

Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
~James Wright from “The Blessing”

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,   
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,   
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,   
Trod with a lighter tread.
~William Butler Yeats from “The Wild Swans at Coole”

‘Tis strange that death
should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.
~William Shakespeare from “King John”

Walking outside before the sun was up on a recent rainy morning,  I heard overhead the swishing hush of wings in flight and the trumpeter swans’ doleful call as dozens passed above me in a long meandering line against the early dawn grayness.

The swan flocks predictably arrive here in late autumn to eat their fill, feasting in the harvested cornfields surrounding our farm, their bright white plumage a stark contrast to the dulling muddy soil. Usually, they stick around until spring, as they lift their long graceful necks and fan out their wings to be picked up the wind, leaving us behind and beneath, moving on to their next feeding and breeding grounds.

These incredible creatures bring such joy with their annual arrival, while their leave-taking reminds me, once again, nothing on earth can last.

My heart recently caught off guard still beats. God’s love heals our earthly hearts.

“‘Tis strange that death should sing…”

I give myself over to their beauty, and walk with lighter tread, singing a new song: I am grateful my heart someday will soar beyond this soil.

 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4: 16-18

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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A New Thank You Gift for Barnstorming Support

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Dear Barnstorming readers,

These four photos are my new “spring series” notecards I have just mailed out to my Barnstorming financial supporters as a thank you gift for your donation of $50 or more.

Your financial support at any level makes a difference to keep this ad-free blog a daily offering, always made free to all readers without a paid subscription.

I want to especially acknowledge those of you who have generously supported Barnstorming over the years by sending you these notecards made from my collection of farm and landscape photos.

Four times a year, I make a seasonal series of blank note cards with my photographs of scenes from our farm and nearby landscapes in Washington state and British Columbia – for donations of $50 or more, I’ll send four in the mail to you as a thank-you gift.

Please email your mailing address to emilypgibson@gmail.com when you make your donation below.

If you prefer to send a check in the mail to support Barnstorming,
email me at emilypgibson@gmail.com and I’ll send you our mailing address.

Thank you all for following Barnstorming and letting me know it makes a difference in your day.

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Thrown Back In

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I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. 
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
– It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
– if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels- until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! 
And I let the fish go. 
~Elizabeth Bishop from “The Fish”

...the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. 
Matthew 13: 47-48

All my life, I’ve taken care of a variety of fish in tanks.  As a child, I would watch, mesmerized, as our tropical fish glided around, happily exploring their little ten gallon world. I willingly cleaned away the algae, rinsed the gravel and changed the filter. As a teenager, I boasted at least three different tanks aerating away in my bedroom, my own little aquacultural world.

During college and medical school, I chose to share my room with goldfish and bettas, thriving on their contentment within a clear glass bowl. I didn’t think of them as emotional support animals, but there was a joy obvious in their albeit limited existence: they still thrived when I was away, not missing me, but were always thrilled when I fed them, and tolerated my messing with their home maintenance.

My current aquarium is over thirty years old and boasts a dozen fish and plenty of furry algae and plants. Some of my watery friends have lived a decade or more and when they pass, I miss them. Even the koi and goldfish in our farm pond have expressive faces and individual personalities that I’ve gotten to know well. They come when I call.

I’m not a fisherman so can’t imagine sorting my finned friends good from bad as the parable suggests will happen in the kingdom of God. 

I know the heart of compassion I feel for these animals I’m responsible for, as I know and have experienced the compassion of our Creator when He sorts out His creatures.

I would hope when I end up in His net, He’ll look at my blemishes and wounds and the number of hooks in my mouth from the times I’ve been caught and escaped. If He’s not yet ready to take me home, or deems me not yet ready to leave this troubled world, He’ll throw me back in the water to keep trying to get it right.

I believe that happened last month when I had a bit of a heart emergency – He let me go, throwing me back in to keep on swimming, giving what I’ve still got to give.

Rainbows, rainbows, rainbows.

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This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Waiting To Be Filled

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Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us
At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;
Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.
~Rudyard Kipling “Seal Lullaby”

For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you.
Psalm 139: 13-18

The call came in the middle of a busy night
as we worked on a floppy baby with high fever,
a croupy toddler whose breathing squeezed and squeaked,
a pale adolescent transfusing due to leukemia bleeding.

It was an anencephalic baby just born, unexpected, unwanted
in a hospital across town, and she needed a place to die.

Our team of three puzzled how to manage a baby without a brain–
simply put her in a room, swaddled, kept warm but alone?
Hydrate her with a dropper of water to moisten her mouth?
Offer her a taste of milk?

She arrived by ambulance, the somber attendants
leaving quickly, unnerved by her mewing cries.

I took the wrapped bundle and peeled away the layers
to find a plump full term baby, her hands gripping, arms waving
once freed;  just another newborn until I pulled off her stocking cap
and looked into an empty crater — only a brainstem lumped at the base.

No textbook pictures had prepared me
for the wholeness, the holiness of this living, breathing child.

Her forehead quit above the eyebrows with the entire skull missing,
tufts of soft brown hair fringed her perfect ears,
around the back of her neck.
Her eyelids puffy, squinting tight, seemingly too big
above a button nose and rosebud pink lips.

She squirmed under my fingers, her muscles strong, breaths coming steady despite no awareness of light or touch or noise.

Yet she cried in little whimpers, mouth working, seeking,
lips tentatively gripping my fingertip. A bottle warmed,
nipple offered, a tentative suck allowing tiny flow,
then, amazing,  a gurgling swallow.

Returning every two hours, more for me than for her, I picked her up
to smell the salty sweet scent of amnion still on her skin as she grew dusky.

Her breathing weakened, her muscles loosened, giving up her grip
on a world she would never see or hear or feel to behold
something far more glorious, as I gazed
into her emptiness, waiting to be filled.

(this poem has been published in Sarah Arthur‘s wonderful Lenten and Eastertide anthology Between Midnight and Dawn)

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Restless in Winter’s Grip

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This morning’s sun is not the honey light
of summer, thick with golden dust and slow
as syrup pouring from a jug. It’s bright,
but thin and cold, and slanted steep and low
across the hillsides. Frost is blooming white,
these flowers forced by icy winds that blow
as hard this morning as they blew all night.
Too cold for rain, but far too dry for snow.

And I am restless, pacing to and fro
enduring winter’s grip that holds us tight.
But my camellias, which somehow know
what weather to expect—they’re always right—
have broken bud. Now scarlet petals glow
outside the window where I sit and write.
~Tiel Aisha Ansari “Camellias” from Dervish Lions

Near a shrine in Japan he’d swept the path
and then placed camellia blossoms there.

Or — we had no way of knowing — he’d swept the path
between fallen camellias.
~Carol Snow “Tour”

Camellias are hardy enough to withstand winter’s low temperatures, defying freezing winds and hard frosts with their resilience.

On windy days, full and ripe camellia blooms plop to the ground without warning, scattering about like a nubby floral throw rug. They are too bulky to step on, so the tendency is to pick a path around them, allowing them the dignity of a few more days before being swept off sidewalks.

In one sense, these fallen winter blossoms are holy messengers, gracing the paths the living must navigate. They are grounding for the passersby, a reminder our own time to let go will soon come. As we restlessly pursue our days and measure our steps, we respectfully make our way around their fading beauty.

An unexpected blessing is bestowed in the camellia’s restlessness:
in their budding,
in their breaking open,
in their full blooming,
in their falling to earth,
in their ebbing away.

The grass withers and the flowers fall,
    because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
    Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fall,
    but the word of our God endures forever.
Isaiah 40:7-8

Mortals, born of woman,
    are of few days and full of trouble.
They spring up like flowers and wither away;
    like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.
Do you fix your eye on them?
Job 14: 1-3

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Farewell, February Face

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“Why, what’s the matter, 
That you have such a February face, 
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?” 
–  William Shakespeare,  Much Ado About Nothing

The wrap-up to February feels like spring is flirting with us.
But will winter really ever be finished?

Our doldrums are deep; a brief respite of sun and warmth too rare.

We feel it in the barn as we go about our daily winter routine. The Haflingers are impatient and yearn for freedom, over-eager when handled, sometimes banging on the stall doors in their frustration at being shut in,  not understanding that the alternative is to stand outside all day in cold rain and wind. To compensate for their confinement, we start grooming off their thick winter coats, urging their hair to loosen and curry off in sheets over parts of their bodies, yet otherwise still clinging tight. 

The horses are a motley crew right now, much like a worn ’60s shag carpet, uneven and in dire need of updating. I prefer that no one see them (or me) like this. Eventually I know the shag on my horses will come off, revealing the sheen of new short hair beneath, but when I look at myself, I’m unconvinced there is such transformation in store for me.

Cranky, I  put one foot ahead of the other, oblivious to the subtle seasonal renewal around me, refusing to believe even in the possibility.

It happened today. 
Dawn broke bright and blinding so I headed outside and stumbled across something extraordinary.

A patch of snowdrops sat blooming in a newly cleared space in our farmyard, visible now only because of bramble removal done last fall. These little white upside down flowers were planted decades ago around our house and yard. There they’ve been, year after year, harbingers of the long-awaited spring to come in a few short weeks, sometimes covered by the overgrowth and invisible to me in my self-absorbed blindness. 

I was astonished that someone, many many years ago, had carried these bulbs around the farm, planting them, hoping they might bless another soul sometime somehow. The blossoms had sprung from their sleep beneath the covering of years of fallen leaves and blackberry vines.

It was as if I’d been physically hugged by this someone long dead, now flesh and blood beside me, with work-rough hands, and dirty fingernails, and broad brimmed hat, and a satisfied smile. This secret gardener is no long living, so I mentally reach back across those years in gratitude, showing my deep appreciation for the time and effort it took to place a foretaste of spring in an unexpected and hidden place.

I am thus compelled to look for ways to leave such a gift for someone to find 70 years from now as they likewise stumble blindly through too many gray days full of human drama, frailty and flaw. Though I will be long gone,  I can reach across the years to grab them, hug them in their doldrums, lift them up and give them hope for what is to come.

It is the peeling away of winter’s shaggy coat, revealing the fresh smoothness of spring glistening underneath.

What an astonishing thought that it was done for me, and in reaffirming that promise of renewal,  I might do it for another.

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