Gathering Prayer for Un-Ordinary Time

Presider      God of the Lark,
God of the Aspen Grove,
we join with all your creatures
in a chorus of praise and worship.

All           We are upheld by your almighty hand;
all that we have and are is yours,
and we bow in gratitude before you.

Presider      May we echo the humble thanksgiving
sung out by cicada and tree frog,
who praise You and your provision without ceasing.

All           May we find delight in the labor you set before us,
as the hummingbird does.

Presider      May we lift our arms to you in praise
like the oak as it stretches skyward.

All           May we constantly sing your praises
like the wind that weaves through pine-needle
and sets them to resonating in joy.

Presider      May we open our hearts to your guidance
for our own sake and the sake of the world,
led by wisdom of the Spirit of Truth,
enlightened by the example of the Prince of Peace,
rooted deep in the verdant garden of the God of Life.

All           Holy Trinity, One God,
envelop us in your mercy and grace this day,

                  that we may be transformed by worship and prayer

              Into bold icons of your love and faithfulness in the world.

--Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, copyright 2023

July 5, 1940

Nought that I would give today
Would half compare
With the long-treasured riches that somewhere
In the deep heart are stored.
Cloud and the moon and mist and the whole
Hoard of frail, white-bubbling stars,
And the cool blessing,
Like moth or wind caressing,
Of the fair, fresh rain-dipped flowers;
And all the spells of the sea, and the new green
Of moss and fern and bracken
Before their youth is stricken;
The thoughts of the trees at eventide, the hush
In the dark corn at morning,
And the wish
In your own heart still but dawning –
All of these,
A soft weight on your hands,
I would give now;
And lastly myself made clean
And white as the wave-washed sand,
If I knew how.


-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) Anglican priest and Welsh poet, from Uncollected Poems.

St. Martin's Summer

Though flowers have perished at the touch
Of Frost, the early comer,
I hail the season loved so much,
The good St. Martin's summer.

O gracious morn, with rose-red dawn,
And thin moon curving o'er it!
The old year's darling, latest born,
More loved than all before it!

How flamed the sunrise through the pines!
How stretched the birchen shadows,
Braiding in long, wind-wavered lines
The westward sloping meadows!

The sweet day, opening as a flower
Unfolds its petals tender,
Renews for us at noontide's hour
The summer's tempered splendor.

The birds are hushed; alone the wind,
That through the woodland searches,
The red-oak's lingering leaves can find,
And yellow plumes of larches.

But still the balsam-breathing pine
Invites no thought of sorrow,
No hint of loss from air like wine
The earth's content can borrow.

The summer and the winter here
Midway a truce are holding,
A soft, consenting atmosphere
Their tents of peace enfolding.

The silent woods, the lonely hills,
Rise solemn in their gladness;
The quiet that the valley fills
Is scarcely joy or sadness.

How strange! The autumn yesterday
In winter's grasp seemed dying;
On whirling winds from skies of gray
The early snow was flying.

And now, while over Nature's mood
There steals a soft relenting,
I will not mar the present good,
Forecasting or lamenting.

My autumn time and Nature's hold
A dreamy tryst together,
And, both grown old, about us fold
The golden-tissued weather.

I lean my heart against the day
To feel its bland caressing;
I will not let it pass away
Before it leaves its blessing.

God's angels come not as of old
The Syrian shepherds knew them;
In reddening dawns, in sunset gold,
And warm noon lights I view them.

Nor need there is, in times like this
When heaven to earth draws nearer,
Of wing or song as witnesses
To make their presence clearer.

O stream of life, whose swifter flow
Is of the end forewarning,
Methinks thy sundown afterglow
Seems less of night than morning!

Old cares grow light; aside I lay
The doubts and fears that troubled;
The quiet of the happy day
Within my soul is doubled.

That clouds must veil this fair sunshine
Not less a joy I find it;
Nor less yon warm horizon line
That winter lurks behind it.

The mystery of the untried days
I close my eyes from reading;
His will be done whose darkest ways
To light and life are leading!

Less drear the winter night shall be,
If memory cheer and hearten
Its heavy hours with thoughts of thee,
Sweet summer of St. Martin!

-- John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), American Quaker poet

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.

[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

Vespers (End of August Heat)

End of August. Heat
like a tent over
John's garden. And some things
have the nerve to be getting started,

clusters of tomatoes, stands

of late lilies-- optimism

of the great stalks-- imperial

gold and silver: but why

start anything

so close to the end?

Tomatoes that will never ripen, lilies

winter will kill, that won't

come back in spring. Or

are you thinking

I spend too much time

looking ahead, like

an old woman wearing

sweaters in summer;

are you saying I can

flourish, having

no hope

of enduring? Blaze of the red cheek, glory

pf the open throat, white.

spotted with crimson.

-- Louise Gluck, (1943- ), American poet, and teacher, US Poet Laureate 2003,  awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2020. Poem from The Wild Iris, 1992.

Not a Drop of Rain

Streets are almost empty, shops are closed down
There's not a soul left in the bar to tell my troubles to
Think I'll walk down to the river that runs just south of town
I hate like hell when there ain't nothin' left to do
But stand beneath the river bridge and listen for the train--
It's been a long hot summer, not a drop of rain

I broke down in December, headed for the coast
I thought the wind and water would elevate my mind
I surfaced in the springtime feelin' like a ghost
Missin' more than ever the things I left behind
Now I'm standin' on this riverbank and still cannot explain
It's been a long hot summer, not a drop of rain

My bag is full of letters unopened and unread
I'm sure they'd tell the story of worry and of form
My heart is beating heavy with all we left unsaid
I swear to you I never meant you any harm
But sacrifice and compromise could never stand the strain
It's been a long hot summer, not a drop of rain

Tonight I'll close my eyes again and try to see your face
And listen for your voice to tell me it's alright to sleep
Convince myself I'll wake up in another time and place
Knowin' all the while that it's a promise I can't keep
A string of broken promises, another link of chain--
It's been a long hot summer, not a drop of rain

The children on the playground, the lovers in the shade
Remind me of a life and time that feels more like a dream
When the sound of love and laughter was the music that we played
As we lay beside the waters of a never ending stream
Now the stream has gone to hiding, the dream lives on in vain
It's been a long hot summer, not a drop of rain

The clouds are building slowly on the skyline to the east
The wind and dust are dancing like the devil across the lake
I could try to find a bottle or try to find a priest
Salvation won't be traveling either road I take
So I turn my collar to the wind that echoes this refrain:
It's been a long hot summer, not a drop of rain.

-- Robert Earl Keen (1956- ), American singer-songwriter

Aftermath

When the summer fields are mown,
When the birds are fledged and flown,
And the dry leaves strew the path;
With the falling of the snow,
With the cawing of the crow,
Once again the fields we mow
And gather in the aftermath.

Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
In the silence and the gloom.

--Henry Wordsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), American poet, essayist, translator, and teacher

Scripture reference: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

In the Mushroom Summer

Colorado turns Kyoto in a shower, 
mist in the pines so thick the crows delight 
(or seem to), winging in obscurity. 
The ineffectual panic of a squirrel 
who chattered at my passing gave me pause 
to watch his Ponderosa come and go— 
long needles scratching cloud. I’d summited 
but knew it only by the wildflower meadow, 
the muted harebells, paintbrush, gentian, 
scattered among the locoweed and sage. 
Today my grief abated like water soaking 
underground, its scar a little path 
of twigs and needles winding ahead of me 
downhill to the next bend. Today I let 
the rain soak through my shirt and was unharmed.

--David Mason (1954- ), American poet, librettist, and Colorado Poet Laureate, 2010

Weeds

The Hubster dislikes
our Rose of Sharon trees—
he likens them to weeds.

Yet I am convinced
that it is always the “weeds”
who provide the most refuge
without asking anything in return.

In five minutes,
I watched six hummingbirds
zoom around the blossoms
as they jockeyed for a chance
at the waning late-summer blooms.

I watched cardinals
and Carolina wrens fight
over the ripening grape clusters
from the vine
that is supported by not one but two trees
along our fence—
trees that also give us privacy in our yard.

I watched butterflies—
humble little skippers,
but also hairstreaks, fritillaries,
swallowtails,
and oh my God, even a monarch,
once so ubiquitous
but now almost as surprising to see
as a Bengal tiger. 

Even on my deck I could hear
the thrum of probably thirty bumble bees
hovering like tugboats from blossom to bloom,
staying aloft
only God knows how.

We owe our lives
to the “weeds” of this world,
to their humble welcome
and hospitality.

The least we can do is call them beautiful.


-- L. K. S.
Photo taken this morning of a bumblebee on a Rose of Sharon and then using the Angel filter on Prisma.

Heavy Summer Rain

The grasses in the field have toppled,
and in places it seems that a large, now
absent, animal must have passed the night.
The hay will right itself if the day

turns dry. I miss you steadily, painfully.
None of your blustering entrances
or exits, doors swinging wildly
on their hinges, or your huge unconscious
sighs when you read something sad,
like Henry Adams’s letters from Japan,
where he traveled after Clover died.

Everything blooming bows down in the rain:
white irises, red peonies; and the poppies
with their black and secret centers
lie shattered on the lawn.

--Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) American poet, from Collected Poems (2205)

In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden

Last night the apple trees shook and gave each lettuce a heart
Six hard red apples broke through the greenhouse glass and
Landed in the middle of those ever-so-slightly green leaves
That seem no mix of seeds and soil but of pastels and light and
Chalk x’s mark our oaks that are supposed to be cut down
I’ve seen the neighbors frown when they look over the fence
And see our espalier pear trees bowing out of shape I did like that
They looked like candelabras against the wall but what’s the sense
In swooning over pruning I said as much to Mrs. Jones and I swear
She threw her cane at me and walked off down the street without
It has always puzzled me that people coo over bonsai trees when
You can squint your eyes and shrink anything without much of
A struggle ensued with some starlings and the strawberry nets
So after untangling the two I took the nets off and watched birds
With red beaks fly by all morning at the window I reread your letter
About how the castles you flew over made crenellated shadows on
The water in the rainbarrel has overflowed and made a small swamp
I think the potatoes might turn out slightly damp don’t worry
If there is no fog on the day you come home I will build a bonfire
So the smoke will make the cedars look the way you like them
To close I’m sorry there won’t be any salad and I love you 

--Matthea Harvey, from Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form

The Lanyard

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room
bouncing from typewriter to piano
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the 'L' section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word, Lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past.
A past where I sat at a workbench
at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips into a lanyard.
A gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard.
Or wear one, if that's what you did with them.
But that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand
again and again until I had made a boxy, red and white   
    lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold facecloths on my forehead
then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim and I in turn presented her 
    with a lanyard.
'Here are thousands of meals' she said,
'and here is clothing and a good education.'
'And here is your lanyard,' I replied,
'which I made with a little help from a counselor.'
'Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth and two clear eyes to read the 
    world.' she whispered.
'And here,' I said, 'is the lanyard I made at camp.'
'And here,' I wish to say to her now,
'is a smaller gift. Not the archaic truth,
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took the two-toned 
    lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless worthless thing I wove out of boredom
would be enough to make us even.'

--Billy Collins (1941- ), US poet laureate 2001-2003

The Thrush

When Winter's ahead,
What can you read in November
That you read in April
When Winter's dead?

I hear the thrush, and I see
Him alone at the end of the lane
Near the bare poplar's tip,
Singing continuously.

Is it more that you know
Than that, even as in April,
So in November,
Winter is gone that must go?

Or is all your lore
Not to call November November,
And April April,
And Winter Winter—no more?

But I know the months all,
And their sweet names, April,
May and June and October,
As you call and call

I must remember
What died into April
And consider what will be born
Of a fair November;

And April I love for what
It was born of, and November
For what it will die in,
What they are and what they are not,

While you love what is kind,
What you can sing in
And love and forget in
All that's ahead and behind.

--Edward Thomas (1878-1917), English writer and poet, killed at the Battle of Arras on April 9, 1917.

Bicknell's thrush

A Song: When June is past, the fading rose

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,

When June is past, the fading rose;

For in your beauty's orient deep

These flowers as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither doth stray

The golden atoms of the day;

For in pure love heaven did prepare

Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste

The nightingale when May is past;

For in your sweet dividing throat

She winters and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars light

That downwards fall in dead of night;

For in your eyes they sit, and there,

Fixed become as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west

The phoenix builds her spicy nest;

For unto you at last she flies,

And in your fragrant bosom dies.

--Thomas Carew (1595-1640), English poet

Inertia

My head was heavy, heavy;
so was the atmosphere.
I had to ask two times
before my hand would scratch my ear.
I thought I should be out
and doing! The grass, for one thing,
needed mowing.

Just then a centipede
reared from the spine
of my open dictionary. It tried
the air with enterprising feelers,
then made its way along the gorge
between 202 and 203. The valley
of the shadow of death came to mind
inexorably.

It can't be easy for the left hand
to know what the right is doing.
And how, on such a day, when the sky
is hazy and perfunctory, how does it
get itself started without feeling
muddled and heavy-hearted?

Well, it had its fill of etymology.
I watched it pull its tail
over the edge of the page, and vanish
in a pile of mail.

--Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), from Collected Poems, 2005

Scripture references: Psalm 23:3; Matthew 6:3

Summer Silence

Eruptive lightnings flutter to and fro
Above the heights of immemorial hills;
Thirst-stricken air, dumb-throated, in its woe
Limply down-sagging, its limp body spills
Upon the earth. A panting silence fills
The empty vault of Night with shimmering bars
Of sullen silver, where the lake distils
Its misered bounty. Hark! No whisper mars
The utter silence of the untranslated stars.

-- e. e. cummings (1894-1962), American poet; this poem first published in the Harvard Advocate, 1913

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
     So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
     So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

--William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles 
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

-- Jane Kenyon (1947-1995). from Let Evening Come (1990)