don’t let love lose
because of tripping and stumbling
don’t let light die
though it may flicker
as petals shatter
and thorns bring blood,
don’t let the rose die from drought
let it bud again with fragrant bloom
let healing happen
I choose you again
let love win
“Courage is found in unlikely places.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien
Fall Song
Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,
the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back
from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere
except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle
of unobservable mysteries — roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This
I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay — how everything lives, shifting
from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.
From Mary Oliver, American Primitive (1984), which won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry
Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea’s side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.
Dylan Thomas
Announcing Autumn on my porch,Duranta berries are reminders of the beauty and importance of small things. Birds love these berries, so I welcome cardinals and mockingbirds as morning visitors. Their thank you notes trill as they perch on my kitchen windowsill. I enjoyed the plant’s summer blooms, but the small berries they left are an enchanting reminder of joy we find when we watch for life as it is made up of moments.
I think of [my life] in all its small component parts: the snowdrops, the daffodils; the feeling of one of my kids sitting close beside me on the couch; the way my husband looks when he reads with the lamp behind him; fettuccine Alfredo; fudge; Gone with the Wind, Pride and Prejudice. Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement.
~ Anna Quindlen, in A Short Guide to a Happy Life
waving alleluias
grasses dance in morning breeze
to rhythm of the seasons
A garden must combine the poetic and the mysterious with a feeling of serenity and joy.
~ Luis Barragan
plants and rocks and water
change with every shift of light
mystery of creation
murmuring stories
singing ancient songs
One of my favorite places to be still is here, beneath a very old oak tree in our church prayer garden. Its branches spread out over a trickling stream and bubbling fountain and a small labyrinth. In dry times, like our present drought, there is crusty brown growth along its mighty branches. But when we are blessed with rainfall, this turns to vibrant green. It is Resurrection Fern.
At all times I soak up the green and growing refreshment of this place. But it is in the times when I feel drought in my spirit that I come here to be still and know God, and to refill and refuel – the greening of my heart, Eastering.
“To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday”. ~John Burrough
vine greens and reaches
early light dawns and dapples
new morning new mercy
“Sitting in your garden is a feat to be worked at with unflagging determination and single-mindedness – for what gardener worth his salt sits down. I am deeply committed to sitting in the garden.” – Mirabel Osler
Sitting still is necessary for so many things: I listen better when I sit still. I hear things unheard when I am crunching on the gravel or digging or clipping. The butterflies and hummingbirds come closer when I am still. The cardinal pair lingers longer on the fence. Appreciation and savoring of beauty may run after me when I am on the move but they settle around my shoulders like a soft cover when I sit still. And in the stillness I begin to settle – the cloudy debris of things which can fret and hurt begin to drift to the bottom, leaving pure, clear knowing. Holy moments can happen when I sit in my garden.
Morning Glory opens
grace glows in star gift
wrapped in blue tissue
“It is a bold and colossal claim that we put forward – that the whole of life is sacramental, that there are innumerable ‘means of grace’ by which God is revealed and communicated – through nature and through human fellowship and through a thousand things that may become the ‘outward and visible sign’ of ‘an inward and spiritual grace’.”
~ A. Barrett Brown
Photo by Madelyn Claire Parker, age 7
Stones and Feathers 