The Feast of Michaelmas

Genesis 28:10-17
Revelation 12:7-12
Psalm 103:19-22
John 1:47-51


Who is like God? The nine choirs of angels shouted,
and Michael, leading the heavenly host,
ground the bat-winged dragon beneath his heel,
he who once bore light, Lucifer,
rocketing to earth on a lightning bolt.
In that moment
Satan, crowned with blackberry brambles,
slinks off trailing intrigue like shadows.
Sword drawn, Michael bows before the Son of Man,
ready to intercede for those in crisis--
his breastplate gleaming like noonday
against the fear that stalks in darkness,
less a messenger than a warrior,
when killing in the name of God was expected.

That’s what the old folk say.

And so, as equinox recedes,
the days grow short, the meadows
rattle with spent blossoms, but
Michaelmas daisies flare like blue stars--
little suns among the weeds.
Stubble stands in harvested fields,
carrots and Queen Anne’s lace are sorted,
the fishermen return to port one last time,
nets bursting, home until spring.
The rent’s due but the cake is sweet.
Innkeepers seethe as the tourists depart at summer’s end,
and throw statues of Michael into the sea.

The fasting Francis of Assisi rises from his knees:
forty days past Ascension,
St. Michael’s Lent gives over to feast,
and there is a moment of luxurious quiet.
Thoughtfully hiding a goose
behind the hem of his robe,
he has her to dinner, rather than for,
offers her a carrot, and smiles.



(For a collection of folk traditions regarding the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, click here and here.)

-- Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, September 29, 2022

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on September 29, 2022.

On the parables of the Mustard Seed

Who ever saw the mustard-plant,
wayside weed or tended crop,
grow tall as a shrub, let alone a tree, a treeful
of shade and nests and songs?
Acres of yellow,
not a bird of the air in sight.

No, He who knew
the west wind brings
the rain, the south wind
thunder, who walked the field-paths
running His hand along wheatstems to glean
those intimate milky kernels, good
to break on the tongue,

was talking of miracle, the seed
within us, so small
we take it for worthless, a mustard-seed, dust,
nothing.
               Glib generations mistake
the metaphor, not looking at fields and trees,
not noticing paradox. Mountains
remain unmoved.

Faith is rare, He must have been saying,
prodigious, unique —
one infinitesimal grain divided
like loaves and fishes,

as if from a mustard-seed
a great shade-tree grew. That rare,
that strange: the kingdom

                                            a tree. The soul
a bird. A great concourse of birds
at home there, wings among yellow flowers.
The waiting
kingdom of faith, the seed
waiting to be sown.


-- Denise Levertov (1923-1997), Anglo-American poet and convert to Catholicism

Scriptural reference: Proper 21C, Luke 17:5-10; Proper 12A, Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Sestina

September rain falls on the house.

In the failing light, the old grandmother

sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

--Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), poet and translator, US Poet Laureate 1949-1950, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner

September, 1819

Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling.

No faint and hesitating trill,
Such tribute as to winter chill
The lonely redbreast pays!
Clear, loud, and lively is the din,
From social warblers gathering in
Their harvest of sweet lays.

Nor doth the example fail to cheer
Me, conscious that my leaf is sere,
And yellow on the bough:—
Fall, rosy garlands, from my head!
Ye myrtle wreaths, your fragrance shed
Around a younger brow!

Yet will I temperately rejoice;
Wide is the range, and free the choice
Of undiscordant themes;
Which, haply, kindred souls may prize
Not less than vernal ecstasies,
And passion's feverish dreams.

For deathless powers to verse belong,
And they like Demi-gods are strong
On whom the Muses smile;
But some their function have disclaimed,
Best pleased with what is aptliest framed
To enervate and defile.

Not such the initiatory strains
Committed to the silent plains
In Britain's earliest dawn:
Trembled the groves, the stars grew pale,
While all-too-daringly the veil
Of nature was withdrawn!

Nor such the spirit-stirring note
When the live chords Alcæus smote,
Inflamed by sense of wrong;
Woe! woe to Tyrants! from the lyre
Broke threateningly, in sparkles dire
Of fierce vindictive song.

And not unhallowed was the page
By wingèd Love inscribed, to assuage
The pangs of vain pursuit;
Love listening while the Lesbian Maid
With finest touch of passion swayed
Her own Æolian lute.

O ye, who patiently explore
The wreck of Herculanean lore,
What rapture! could ye seize
Some Theban fragment, or unroll
One precious, tender-hearted scroll
Of pure Simonides.

That were, indeed, a genuine birth
Of poesy; a bursting forth
Of genius from the dust:
What Horace gloried to behold,
What Maro loved, shall we enfold?
Can haughty Time be just!

-- William Wordsworth (1770-1850), English Romantic poet, poet laureate of England from 1843-1850.

Last Day of Summer

Yours is the day, yours also the night;

    you established the luminaries and the sun.

You have fixed all the bounds of the earth;

    you made summer and winter.

— Psalm 74:16-17

It is time to gather
the green tomatoes,
even as the day and night are at equinox.
Gourds lie drunkenly in the fields.
The crows exult in thuggery
as they hog the birdfeeders, the jays
cursing them with frat-boy fluency.
Strange migrants, Nashville warblers, phoebes, and vireos,
belly up like tourists in a foreign pub,
nervously observing the commotion,
in the basement of the pecking order.

Whether you call it
haying season
or hay-fever season
reveals your real relationship to the land:
as giver or nuisance.

After years of living in a maze of suburban
lawns crowding haphazardly against each other
like mah-jongg tiles midgame, we now live
where folks like this farmer own tractors unironically,
faded rust colored, almost salmon pink
International Harvesters tilting and
heeling, sailboats in a sea of grass. He’s dragging
a wheel rake behind him, peering over his shoulder
in Half Lord of Fishes pose, the farmer-yogi sagely
trails windrows behind, a serpent effigy mound,
ceremoniously marking the celestial season
transition to equinox
after darkfall.

There’s a sweet clean fragrance of the dew 
vaporizing in the heat
as the grass is tedded rather than tended.
Let the sun do his work,
this final summer sun
in all faithfulness. Summer lingers
until earth turn away at the coming twilight.

The last day of summer is not yet over,
despite the barbarism of storefronts 
full of sweaters, cinnamon, skeletons, even Santas. It is
a precious time of turning from green to gold,
of tending to harvest, of lining up 

what has been received:
this last summer sunset
with gratitude and grace.

-- Leslie Scoopmire, first published this day at Episcopal Journal's Speaking to the Soul on September 22, 2022.

A Narrow Girdle of Rough Stains and Crags

 A narrow girdle of rough stones and crags, 

 A rude and natural causeway, interposed 

 Between the water and a winding slope 

 Of copse and thicket, leaves the eastern shore 

 Of Grasmere safe in its own privacy: 

 And there myself and two beloved Friends, 

 One calm September morning, ere the mist 

 Had altogether yielded to the sun, 

 Sauntered on this retired and difficult way. ----

 Ill suits the road with one in haste; but we 

 Played with our time; and, as we strolled along, 

 It was our occupation to observe 

 Such objects as the waves had tossed ashore-- 

 Feather, or leaf, or weed, or withered bough, 

 Each on the other heaped, along the line 

 Of the dry wreck. And, in our vacant mood, 

 Not seldom did we stop to watch some tuft 

 Of dandelion seed or thistle's beard, 

 That skimmed the surface of the dead calm lake, 

 Suddenly halting now--a lifeless stand! 

 And starting off again with freak as sudden; 

 In all its sportive wanderings, all the while, 

 Making report of an invisible breeze 

 That was its wings, its chariot, and its horse, 

 Its playmate, rather say, its moving soul. --

And often, trifling with a privilege 

Alike indulged to all, we paused, one now, 

And now the other, to point out, perchance 

 To pluck, some flower or water-weed, too fair 

 Either to be divided from the place 

 On which it grew, or to be left alone 

 To its own beauty. Many such there are, 

 Fair ferns and flowers, and chiefly that tall fern, 

 So stately, of the queen Osmunda named; 

 Plant lovelier, in its own retired abode 

 On Grasmere's beach, than Naiad by the side 

 Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere, 

 Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance. --

 So fared we that bright morning: from the fields 

 Meanwhile, a noise was heard, the busy mirth 

 Of reapers, men and women, boys and girls. 

 Delighted much to listen to those sounds, 

 And feeding thus our fancies, we advanced 

 Along the indented shore; when suddenly, 

 Through a thin veil of glittering haze was seen 

 Before us, on a point of jutting land, 

 The tall and upright figure of a Man 

 Attired in peasant's garb, who stood alone, 

 Angling beside the margin of the lake. 

 "Improvident and reckless," we exclaimed, 

 "The Man must be, who thus can lose a day 

 Of the mid harvest, when the labourer's hire 

 Is ample, and some little might be stored 

 Wherewith to cheer him in the winter time." 

 Thus talking of that Peasant, we approached 

 Close to the spot where with his rod and line 

 He stood alone; whereat he turned his head 

 To greet us--and we saw a Man worn down 

 By sickness, gaunt and lean, with sunken cheeks 

 And wasted limbs, his legs so long and lean 

 That for my single self I looked at them, 

 Forgetful of the body they sustained.-- 

 Too weak to labour in the harvest field, 

 The Man was using his best skill to gain 

 A pittance from the dead unfeeling lake 

 That knew not of his wants. I will not say 

 What thoughts immediately were ours, nor how 

 The happy idleness of that sweet morn, 

 With all its lovely images, was changed 

 To serious musing and to self-reproach. 

 Nor did we fail to see within ourselves 

 What need there is to be reserved in speech, 

 And temper all our thoughts with charity. --

Therefore, unwilling to forget that day, My Friend, 

Myself, and She who then received 

 The same admonishment, have called the place 

 By a memorial name, uncouth indeed 

 As e'er by mariner was given to bay 

 Or foreland, on a new-discovered coast; 

 And POINT RASH-JUDGMENT is the name it bears.

--William Wordsworth (1770-1850), English poet and British poet laureate

Little But Fierce

 

Whoever is faithful in a very little 

is faithful also in much…- Luke 16:10

 

Some pray for faith to move mountains;
but overlook the gnarled and knotty pine
that grasps the cliff face
with roots as strong as talons
that persistently turn that mountain into soil,
daredevil defying gravity and wind
its needles whistling a laughing alleluia.

 

Some pray for the faith of a mustard seed,
forgetting, in the parable
it was an ugly, humble weed
better located outside the garden wall.

 

Lord, let me pray for the faithfulness 
proclaimed by the honest little flower
that’s blooming in the pavement crack
or garbage dump; the dandelion,
maned all in white ruff, who
though spurned, has nourished the bees all season.

 

This is my prayer: 

to be brave enough to offer my heart
like a flare of blue in an autumn sky
without calculus of renown or esteem.

O Lord, make me faithful 
like little, overlooked things.

-- Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, first published at Episcopal Journal's Speaking to the Soul on September 15, 2022

[what if a much of a which of a wind]

what if a much of a which of a wind
gives truth to the summer's lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend:blow space to time)
—when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror;blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
—whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it's they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn't: blow death to was)
—all nothing's only our hugest home;
the most who die,the more we live

--e. e. cummings (1894-1962) American lyric poet and playwright

Leavetaking

Nearing the start of that mysterious last season
Which brings us to the close of the other four,
I’m somewhat afraid and don’t know how to prepare
So I will praise you.

I will praise you for the glaze on buttercups
And for the pearly scent of wild fresh water
And the great crossbow shapes of swans flying over
With that strong silken threshing sound of wings
Which you gave them when you made them without voices.

And I will praise you for crickets.
On starry autumn nights
When the earth is cooling
Their rusty diminutive music
Repeated over and over
Is the very marrow of peace.

And I praise you for crows calling from treetops
The speech of my first village,
And for the sparrow’s flash of song
Flinging me in an instant
The joy of a child who woke
Each morning to the freedom
Of her mother’s unclouded love
And lived in it like a country.

And I praise you that from vacant lots
From only broken glass and candy wrappers
You raise up the blue chicory flowers.

I thank you for that secret praise
Which burns in every creature,
And I ask you to bring us to life
Out of every sort of death

And teach us mercy.

--Anne Porter (1911-2011), Roman Catholic poet, from Living Things: Collected Poems

The Way Prayer Rises

 

The way the air holds warmth 

like a brimming teacup, tenderly
lifting the turkey vultures so high
their grace is all you see, as they trace
lazy lemniscates 
                     forever,
                           forever,
                               forever,
balancing on a thermal delicately,
black-winged angels gravely waltzing 
           atop the head of a pin

The way the painted sunflower bows
her head under the weight of the bumblebee
and the tickseed heads bristle with hyphenated seeds
that will scatter their blessings over 
the living earth
     and prepare a table before the goldfinch
        in the presence of those who treasure her

The way September’s grasshopper
rasps his way from ditches to gravel roads
his battered wings extolling his travels even as
newborn monarchs iron their wings
     under a radiant, dog-summer sun
          and shadows with edges like knives

The way the redbud leaves dance–
a line in the canopy shifting green to citrine
affirming the beauty of repair, healing, and resilience
like a vein of gold repairing a broken pot
      made more beautiful
            for the continued life it offers

is the way prayer rises and falls

-- This was first published at Episcopal Journal's Speaking to the Soul on September 8, 2022.

To the Queen, by the prayers

As the dial hand tells o'er

The same hours it had before,

Still beginning in the ending,
Circular account still lending,

So, most mighty Queen we pray,
Like the dial day by day

You may lead the seasons on,
Making new when old are gone,

That the babe which now is young
And hath yet no use of tongue

Many a Shrovetide here may bow
To that empress I do now,

That the children of these lords,
Sitting at your council boards,

May be grave and aged seen
Of her that was their fathers' queen.

Once I wish this wish again,
Heaven subscribe it with "Amen."

-- attributed to William Shakespeare (1564-1616) discovered in 1972 in a notebook belonging to Elizabeth I's servant Henry Stanford.

Today Queen Elizabeth II passed away at the age of 96.

To the Light of September

When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not 

and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks that lean
over their broken
shadows across the cracked ground 

but they all know
that you have come
the seed heads of the sage
the whispering birds
with nowhere to hide you
to keep you for later 

you
who fly with them 

you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with blue plums
that have fallen through the night 

perfect in the dew

-- W. S. Merwin (1927-2019), two time Poet Laureate of the United States (1999-200 and 2010-2011), two time Pulitzer Prize winner, translator, poet, anti-war activist, and ecologist

The Geranium

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,

She looked so limp and bedraggled, 

So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle, 

Or a wizened aster in late September, 

I brought her back in again 

For a new routine-- 

Vitamins, water, and whatever 

Sustenance seemed sensible 

At the time: she'd lived 

So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer, 

Her shriveled petals falling 

On the faded carpet, the stale 

Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves. 

(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.) 

 The things she endured!-- 

The dumb dames shrieking half the night 

Or the two of us, alone, both seedy, 

Me breathing booze at her, 

She leaning out of her pot toward the window. 

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me-- 

And that was scary-- 

So when that snuffling cretin of a maid 

Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can, 

I said nothing. 

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week, 

I was that lonely.

-- Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) American poet and teacher,  winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1954, for The Waking, two-time National Book Award winner

On an Apple-Ripe September Morning

On an apple-ripe September morning 

Through the mist-chill fields I went
With a pitch-fork on my shoulder
Less for use than for devilment.

The threshing mill was set-up, I knew,
In Cassidy's haggard last night,
And we owed them a day at the threshing
Since last year. O it was delight

To be paying bills of laughter
And chaffy gossip in kind
With work thrown in to ballast
The fantasy-soaring mind.

As I crossed the wooden bridge I wondered
As I looked into the drain
If ever a summer morning should find me
Shovelling up eels again.

And I thought of the wasps' nest in the bank
And how I got chased one day
Leaving the drag and the scraw-knife behind,
How I covered my face with hay.

The wet leaves of the cocksfoot
Polished my boots as I
Went round by the glistening bog-holes
Lost in unthinking joy.

I'll be carrying bags to-day, I mused,
The best job at the mill
With plenty of time to talk of our loves
As we wait for the bags to fill.

Maybe Mary might call round...
And then I came to the haggard gate,
And I knew as I entered that I had come
Through fields that were part of no earthly estate.

-- Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), Irish poet and novelist

September Midnight

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.

The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence
Under a moon waning and worn, broken,
Tired with summer.

Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,
Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,
Snow-hushed and heavy.

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction,
While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest,
As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,
Lest they forget them.

-- Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), St. Louis-born America poet, winner of what would eventually be the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1918.

Praise Song at Dawn

Loving Creator,

we rise from our rest to sing your praise,
joining the world You have made holy
through your hands, O God.

The coyotes are back in their dens,
after antagonizing the farm dogs all night;
the barred owls have paused their conversation
under the lacy veil of heaven at sun rise;
katydid, tree frog, and cricket have raised their song
and filled the night with the throb of their praise:
now it is time for us to lift our hearts
and join in the love song of the Earth for our Maker.

Almighty One, this moment is your gift to us, too:
let us use it to center ourselves in your grace.
Let us in our prayer give thanks
for all your blessings to us,
especially this fragile Earth:
may we seek to mend and heal
the frayed cords that bind us to all creation,
and see with new eyes the beauty and completeness
in a drop of rain or sparkle of dew.

The Earth beneath our feet
is your gift to all that lives,
to animal, tree, and stream: all creation is holy.
May we care for each other with tenderness and unity,
walking in the healing path that Jesus invites us to follow.
Tune our hearts to always hear
the echo of our Savior’s laughter and empathy
through the air that still carries the imprint
of his breath and blessing.

Spirit of the Living God,
spread your wings over us
that we may be strengthened to joyfully greet this day,
and grant your peace to all for whom we pray.

Amen.

-- Leslie Barnes Scoopmire. This was first published at Episcopal Journal's Speaking to the Soul on September 1, 2022.