Fungus on Fallen Alder at Lookout Creek

     

Florid, fluted, flowery petal, flounce

of a girl’s dress, ruffled fan,
striped in what seems to my simple eye
an excess of extravagance,
intricately ribboned like a secret
code, a colorist’s vision of DNA.
At the outermost edge a scallop
of ivory, then a tweedy russet,
then mouse gray, a crescent
of celadon velvet, a streak of sleek seal brown,
a dark arc of copper, then butter,
then celadon again, again butter, again
copper and on into the center, striped thinner
and thinner to the green, green moss-furry heart.
How can this be necessary?
Yet it grows and is making more
of itself, dozens and dozens of tiny starts, stars
no bigger than a baby’s thumbnail,
all of them sucking one young dead tree
on a gravel bank that will be washed away
in the next flooding winter. But isn’t the air here
cool and wet and almost unbearably sweet?

-- Ellen Bass (1947- ) American poet and  Chancellor Emeritus of the American Academy of Poets

Fishing in the Keep of Silence

There is a hush now while the hills rise up
and God is going to sleep. He trusts the ship
of Heaven to take over and proceed beautifully
as he lies dreaming in the lap of the world.
He knows the owls will guard the sweetness
of the soul in the massive keep of silence,
looking out with eyes open or closed over
the length of Tomales Bay that the egrets
conform to, whitely broad in flight, white
and slim in standing. God, who thinks about
poetry all the time, breathes happily as He
repeats to Himself: there are fish in the net,
lots of fish this time in the net of the heart.

--Linda Gregg (1942-2019), American poet, from All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems, 2008

Scripture reference: Luke 5:1-11, 5th Sunday after Epiphany C

Place

Once in a while

you may come across a place
where everything
seems as close to perfection
as you will ever need.
And striving to be faultless
the air on its knees
holds the trees apart,
yet nothing is categorically
thus, or that, and before the dusk
mellows and fails
the light is like honey
on the stems of tussock grass,
and the shadows are mauve birthmarks
on the hills.


-- Brian Turner (1944- ), New Zealand poet

This poem was printed on a signpost at Lake Matheson at the place to see this view.

Looking West, Late Afternoon, Low Water

The typical tidal range, or difference in sea level between high and low tides, in the open ocean is about 2 ft (0.6 m), but it is much greater near the coasts.—Desk encyclopaedia


Our beach was never so bare. Freak tide,
system fault, inhuman error, will it

never stop falling? After dark, said
the tables of high water and sunset

pasted on the wall, which don’t deceive.
Come on down for a walk while there’s light.

A wall of pale green glass miles above
head high alongside, complete with fish

crossing, is what will have been the wave
once it has broken. Leviathan is

the beached cachalot we left Bob Falla
filleting for science, the ebb to wash

away these fifty years, each one smaller
than the last. Come down, this is today

delivered factory fresh, in colour
heated by the late sun. Time to try

looking on the bright side, or join those
Great God! (says the poem) who’d rather be

suckled in a creed outworn: but whose
cast-off cult’s to be the lucky one?

Great waters, unfinished business, done
blind to the deadline. From that rock, to

this tree was tapu and it sticks. Thin
pickings, Tangaroa, this is pakeha

story time, only Okeanos and
sister Tethys having it off; the way

they love makes hairy cliff-hanging seas
roll drums on the sand, the 3-metre swell

flat on the seabed bangs the pubes,
very ancient and fishlike they smell

close to. Divine all the same. Dangerous,
not to be approached, least of all by

mortal man whose years are four-score plus
tomorrow night. While I count the three

strong swimmers carried past out of sight
round the North Rocks the whole shoreline shakes

underfoot again, dead friends call out
not to be heard. Look west, what looks

back is blood-orange nightfall, the stooped
sky drowning another sun overboard

where the horizon was: till it snapped
those deep-sea moorings and will be heard

oncoming, the sound of a scream, tsunami!
tsunami! splintering deadwood of the boat

I lost half a life ago, swept
away with a judgment on the work

she’s amateur built but your friends won’t know.
Last seen, one inflatable rescue

craft stood on its tuck, bows to skyward
in fast failing light, a turning tide.




-- Allan Curnow (1911-2001), New Zealand poet, teacher, and reporter.

Among the Redwoods

Farewell to such a world! Too long I press
   The crowded pavement with unwilling feet.
Pity makes pride, and hate breeds hatefulness,
   And both are poisons. In the forest, sweet
The shade, the peace! Immensity, that seems
To drown the human life of doubts and dreams.

Far off the massive portals of the wood,
   Buttressed with shadow, misty-blue, serene,
Waited my coming. Speedily I stood
   Where the sun wall rose roofed in plumy green.
Dare one go in?— Glance backward! Dusk as night
Each column, fringed with sprays of amber light.

--E. R. Sill (1841-1887) published in The Atlantic in 1884)

Today's Adventword was "peace."

No Ordinary Sun

Tree let your arms fall:

raise them not sharply in supplication
to the bright enhaloed cloud.
Let your arms lack toughness and
resilience for this is no mere axe
to blunt, nor fire to smother.

Your sap shall not rise again
to the moon's pull.
No more incline a deferential head
to the wind's talk, or stir
to the tickle of coursing rain.

Your former shagginess shall not be
wreathed with the delightful flight
of birds nor shield
nor cool the ardour of unheeding
lovers from the monstrous sun.

Tree let your naked arms fall
nor extend vain entreaties to the radiant ball.
This is no gallant monsoon's flash,
no dashing trade wind's blast.
The fading green of your magic
emanations shall not make pure again
these polluted skies ... for this
is no ordinary sun.

O tree
in the shadowless mountains
the white plains and
the drab sea floor
your end at last is written.

--Hone Tuwhare (1922- -2008) One of the greatest Maori poets of New Zealand, NZ poet laureate from 1999-2000. Published in 1964.

Becoming a Redwood

Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds
start up again. The crickets, the invisible
toad who claims that change is possible,

And all the other life too small to name.
First one, then another, until innumerable
they merge into the single voice of a summer hill.

Yes, it’s hard to stand still, hour after hour,
fixed as a fencepost, hearing the steers
snort in the dark pasture, smelling the manure.

And paralyzed by the mystery of how a stone
can bear to be a stone, the pain
the grass endures breaking through the earth’s crust.

Unimaginable the redwoods on the far hill,
rooted for centuries, the living wood grown tall
and thickened with a hundred thousand days of light.

The old windmill creaks in perfect time
to the wind shaking the miles of pasture grass,
and the last farmhouse light goes off.

Something moves nearby. Coyotes hunt
these hills and packs of feral dogs.
But standing here at night accepts all that.

You are your own pale shadow in the quarter moon,
moving more slowly than the crippled stars,
part of the moonlight as the moonlight falls,

Part of the grass that answers the wind,
part of the midnight’s watchfulness that knows
there is no silence but when danger comes.

--Dana Gioia (1950- ), American poet and former executive at General Mills

Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, Iroquois Confederacy

Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address

Iroquois Confederacy 

(Ganonhanyonh- The Words Before All Words)

 

Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty and responsibility to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give our greetings and our thanks to one another as people.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

 

We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our mother, we send our greetings and our thanks.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

 

We give thanks to all the waters of the world for quenching our thirst and providing us with strength. Water is life. We know its power in many forms — waterfalls and rain, mists and streams, rivers and oceans. We are grateful that the waters are still here and meeting their responsibility to the rest of creation. Can we agree that water is important to our lives and bring our minds together as one to send greetings and thanks to the water? With one mind, we send our greetings and our thanks to the spirit of Water.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

 

We turn our minds to the all the Fish life in the water. They were instructed to cleanse and purify the water. They also give themselves to us as food. We are grateful that we can still find pure water. So, we turn now to the Fish and send our greetings and our thanks.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

 

Now we turn toward the Plants. As far as the eye can see, the Plants grow, working many wonders. They sustain many life forms. With our minds gathered together, we give our thanks and look forward to seeing Plant life continue for many generations to come.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE

 

With one mind, we turn to honor and thank all the Food Plants we harvest from the garden, especially the Three Sisters who feed the people with such abundance. Since the beginning of time, the grains, vegetables, beans and berries have helped the people survive. Many other living things draw strength from them too. We gather all the Plant Foods together as one and send them our greetings and our thanks.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

 

Now we turn to all the Medicine plants of the world. From the beginning they were instructed to take away sickness. They are always waiting and ready to heal us. We are happy there are still among us those special few who remember how to use these plants for healing. With one mind we send our greetings and our thanks to the Medicines, and to the keepers of the Medicines.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

 

We gather our minds together to send our greetings and our thanks to all the Animal life in the world. They have many things to teach us as people. We are honored by them when they give up their lives so we may use their bodies as food for our people. We see them near our homes and in the deep forests. We are glad they are still here and we pray that this will always be so.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

 

We now turn our thoughts to the Trees. The Earth has many families of Trees who have their own instructions and uses. Some provide us with shelter and shade, others with fruit, beauty and other useful things. The Maple is the leader of the trees, to recognize the gift of sugar when the people need it most. Many people of the world use a Tree as a symbol of peace and strength. With one mind, we send our greetings and our thanks to the Tree life.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

 

We put our minds together as one and thank all the Birds who move and fly about over our heads. The Creator gave them beautiful songs. Each day they remind us to enjoy and appreciate life. The Eagle was chosen to be their leader. To all the Birds — from the smallest to the largest — we send our joyful greetings and our thanks.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE

 

We are all thankful to the powers we know as the Four Winds. We hear their voices in the moving air as they refresh us and purify the air we breathe. They help us to bring the change of seasons. From the four directions they come, bringing us messages and giving us strength. With one mind, we send our greetings and our thanks to the Four Winds.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE

 

Now we turn to the west where our grandfathers, the Thunders live. With lightning and thundering voices, they bring with them the water that renews life. We are thankful that they keep those evil things made by Okwiseres underground. We bring our minds together as one to send our greetings and our thanks to our Grandfathers, the Thunders.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

 

We now send our greetings and our thanks to our eldest Brother, the Sun. Each day without fail he travels the sky from east to west, bringing the light of a new day. He is the source of all the fires of life. With one mind, we send our greetings and our thanks to our Brother, the Sun.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

 

We put our minds together to give thanks to our oldest Grandmother, the Moon, who lights the night‐time sky. She is the leader of woman all over the world, and she governs the movement of the ocean tides. By her changing face we measure time, and it is the Moon who watches over the arrival of children here on Earth. With one mind, we send our greetings and our thanks to our Grandmother, the Moon.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

 

We give our thanks to the Stars who are spread across the sky like jewels. We see them in the night, helping the Moon to light the darkness and bringing dew to the gardens and growing things. When we travel at night, they guide us home. With our minds gathered together as one, we send our greetings and our thanks for the Stars.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

 

We gather our minds together to consider the Wisdom Keepers who have come to help the people throughout the ages. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed to live. With one mind, we send our greetings and our thanks to these caring teachers.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

 

Now we turn our thoughts to the Creator, Shonkwaia’tîson, and send our greetings and our thanks for all the gifts of Creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here on this Mother Earth. For all the love that is around us, we gather our minds together as one and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to the Creator.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

 

We have now arrived at the place where we end our words. Of all the things we have named, it is not our intention to leave anything out. If something has been forgotten, we leave it to each individual to send their greetings and their thanks in their own way.

AND NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

--Originally found in Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass; also located at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, https://americanindian.si.edu/environment/pdf/01_02_Thanksgiving_Address.pdf 

Image: Iroquois Longhouse

As explained by the Indigenous Values Initiative:

Haudenosaunee tradition teaches us that peace requires gratitude.  We are to be thankful for the living world.  Our relationship to the Earth is the basis of our sustenance and our peacefulness.  Our Mother Earth connects us to a perpetual process of creation, and she continues to provide all we need to be happy and healthy.

To this very day, nearly every social, cultural and political event that takes place at the Onondaga Nation begins and ends with the “words that come before all others,” that is known as the “Thanksgiving Address.”  Through these words, our minds are gathered together to share our thankfulness of what nature provides, and acknowledges the ongoing impact of these forces on human lives.  The Thanksgiving Address acknowledges the people, earth, waters, plants, animals, birds, bushes, trees, winds, sun, moon, stars, as well as the unseen spiritual forces.  There are a multitude of connections between human beings and other living beings in the world.  The Haudenosaunee are thankful for all the gifts that we receive.

Many Native Americans express gratitude for the gifts of life.  It was this that inspired the holiday of Thanksgiving in the United States. Think for a moment about what in nature makes you thankful. What is your relationship to the plants, animals, water, and air that surrounds you?

We Will Remember

When we are weary and in need of strength
When we are lost and sick at heart,
We remember him.

When we have a joy we crave to share
When we have decisions that are difficult to make
When we have achievements that are based on his
We remember him.

At the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter
At the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring,
We remember him.

At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer
At the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
We remember him.

At the rising of the sun and at its setting
We remember him.

As long as we live, he too will live
For he is now a part of us,
As we remember him.

--from the Yizkor (May God Remember) service (Jewish memorial service), explained at My Jewish Learning. Prayer originally found at Eat Pray Love Liturgy.

A Short Story of Falling

It is the story of the falling rain
to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower
to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary
that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water's wishes and this tale
hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail

if only I a passerby could pass
as clear as water through a plume of grass

to find the sunlight hidden at the tip
turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip

then I might know like water how to balance
the weight of hope against the light of patience

water which is so raw so earthy-strong
and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along

drawn under gravity towards my tongue
to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song

which is the story of the falling rain
that rises to the light and falls again

-- Alice Oswald (1966- ), award-winning English poet, and first female appointed Oxford Professor of Poetry in 2019

Psalm

With coals of juniper, Lord, with ripped willow clumps,
with lodge-pole pine and fir, with wind-wrack and slash,
I kindle an all-night fire to mirror You.
No longer waning, no longer falsifying chimes.
No longer smoking out rot, or eclipsing Yeshiva scholars.
No Lord I know what is within magnified.
Stars will just have to wait to eddy through gates of night.
Little swirl, mimicking nebulae, mimicking galaxies, which turns
for no apparent reason other than to cast and recast the whole
as it whirs and whirls, knocks and ticks at three am
in a snit to proclaim itself not as You but it in You.
If I can strut a note, can rack wobbly pins,
balance rocks into signposts, waves into a grass mass or two,
it will hear itself structuring time. This oddly chopped
watched dimension quarters us into early middle late.
Each day scans and wanes, some hope knowing its moaning
is mourning what it erases. The and stamped by the sea
each second. Be with it and what it erases ceases to toll.

-- Emily Warn (1953- ), Seattle-based American (and Jewish) poet, teacher, web consultant, and creator of poetryfoundation.org online website.

OK Let's Go

Let’s go to Dawn School
and learn again to begin

oh something different
from repetition

Let’s go to the morning
and watch the sun smudge

every bankrupt idea
of nature “you can’t write about

anymore” said my friend
the photographer “except

as science”
Let’s enroll ourselves

in the school of the sky
where knowing

how to know
and unknow is everything

we’ll come to know
under what they once thought

was the dome of the world

-- Maureen N. McLane, American poet, professor, and academic

The Value of Sparrows

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?”- Matthew 10:29

The Almighty, and my professor,
have enticed me to commit
to thirty minutes of daily unstructured prayer.
For Episcopalians, this may almost
sound heretical, but I put away
my prayerbooks and liturgies, and sit in silence
at dawn, to discern the tender voice of God
in whatever guise she assumes
by this pond
in the middle
of this campus
on this rainy mountaintop,
clouds above, clouds below.

At first all you can hear
are the intrusions crafted by humans:
the ringing of an unattended telephone, the
garbage men greeting one another, heavy
machinery belching diesel fumes aloft,
revving engines, egad--
and it’s not even six a.m.

Re-center, the wind murmurs,
stippling the face of the pond like hammered silver,
and the poplar leaves flash pale
as they shrug over in unison,
hands cupped in gratitude to midwife the coming rain.

But then, the voice of God hovers
just behind my ear:
fish crows chiding “ah ah” just over my shoulder;
Carolina wrens’ liquid song arrowing from the underbrush
as Bachman’s sparrow—named after a preacher-- trills;
a red-winged blackbird’s alarm whistle
blending perfectly into the sound
of the garbage truck reversing,
upending any smug certainty
of the comparative value of sparrows.

-- Leslie Barnes Scoopmire; this was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 22, 2023.

Image: the pond at which I was praying at Sewanee during my summer school session there.

Veni Creator

Come, Holy Spirit,
bending or not bending the grasses,
appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame,
at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow
covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada.
I am only a man: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church
lifts its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But I understand that signs must be human,
therefore call one man, anywhere on earth
not me—after all I have some decency—
and allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you.

-Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), Nobel Prize winning Polish poet, exiled to the US

The Slip

The river takes the land, and leaves nothing.
Where the great slip gave way in the bank
and an acre disappeared, all human plans
dissolve. An aweful clarification occurs
where a place was. Its memory breaks
from what is known now, and begins to drift.
Where cattle grazed and trees stood, emptiness
widens the air for bird flight, wind, and rain.
As before the beginning, nothing is there.
Human wrong is in the cause, human
ruin in the effect-- but no matter;
all will be lost, no matter the reason.
Nothing, having arrived, will stay.
The earth, even, is like a flower, so soon
passeth it away. And yet there's nothing
is the seed of all—heaven’s clear
eye, where all the worlds appear.
Where the imperfect has departed, the perfect
begins its struggle to return. The good gift
begins again its descent. The maker moves
in the unmade, stirring the water until
it clouds, dark beneath the surface,
stirring and darkening the soul until pain
perceives new possibility. There is nothing
to do but learn and wait, return to work
on what remains. Seed will sprout in the scar.
Though death is in the healing, it will heal.


-- Wendell Berry (1934- ), American poet, teacher, farmer, essayist, and agrarian

Messenger

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
   equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; There the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
   keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
   astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
   and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
   to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
   that we live forever.


--Mary Oliver (1935-2019), American poet, teacher, writer and treasure, from Thirst: Poems, 2006

Image: Anemones in the Augustinian nunnery ruins, Iona, 2018.

A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure and the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy and the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And to make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
To which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends he will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

--Robert Frost (1874-1963), much-lauded American poet, including four Pulitzer Prizes.

Willow

...and a decrepit handful of trees.
—Aleksandr Pushkin

And I matured in peace born of command,
in the nursery of the infant century,
and the voice of man was never dear to me,
but the breeze’s voice—that I could understand.
The burdock and the nettle I preferred,
but best of all the silver willow tree.
Its weeping limbs fanned my unrest with dreams;
it lived here all my life, obligingly.
I have outlived it now, and with surprise.
There stands the stump; with foreign voices other
willows converse, beneath our, beneath those skies,
and I am hushed, as if I’d lost a brother.

-- Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966), great Russian writer, poet, and translator, translated by Jennifer Reese

Painting - "Willow" by Claude Monet

A Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Anglo-Welsh poet and Anglican priest

Scripture references: Matthew 13:45-46; Exodus 3:1-17

Every Riven Thing

God goes, belonging to every riven thing he’s made
sing his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky,
man who sees and sings and wonders why

God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he’s made,
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into a stillness where

God goes belonging. To every riven thing he’s made
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see

God goes belonging to every riven thing. He’s made
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,

God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.


--Christian Wiman (1966- ), American poet, essayist, writer, former editor at Poetry magazine, and former Southern Baptist.