Poem of the day

"Home, where I can pause, remain silent. There is nothing to explain."

Terry Tempest Williams, Desert Quartet

Our friend, Owen's, Earth Day message...

"The less one needs,
the more one is able to share.
Live light
Love life"

"The natural ecosystem is one measure. But the other necessary measure for humans is the longevity of memory on the land. If we could maintain four generations of continuous attention in a family or neighborhood lineage, then we’d know more about sustainability."

Wendell Berry on land use and sustainability

A freind in high school wrote this. I hope she does not mind , this has made me laugh for over 35 years. Her initials are MG. This short poem has pulled me out of some tough spots , it's been a mantra.

The snails
Slimy trail
Reminds me
of Yours.

“Teaching is overemphasized in our society. Learning is the thing. Teaching doesn’t automatically result in learning. Learning requires love and desire, and when you have that, anything and everybody is a teacher.”

"As Harlan cranked away, grinding his breakfast wheat, I questioned him sharply about this. “Physical labor is not of itself repugnant,” he said. “Too much physical labor is repugnant. A moderate amount is fun. That’s why people who think they have escaped hard labor turn to jogging or some such waste of energy that is actually more tedious than farmwork. I think also that doing hard physical labor for someone else does become tedious. Doing the bidding of someone else is distasteful, whether the work is physically straining or not. The body wants to work but not as someone else’s slave. My work is pleasant and satisfying.”


"I try to conceive a life of more leisure, a condition which men have ever been trying to achieve by various means—by forcing slaves or captives in war to do their menial work, or by letting it devolve upon womenfolk, or by hiring servants and nowadays by innumerable machines and gadgets. This last solution allows everyone to play the master, but it is well known that machines are on the way to become masters of man."

Harlan Hubbard

"You are a flower."

My friend cracks me up with the stuff he says out of the blue.

"An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent and war is it's inevitable by product. We need a peaceable economy."
Wendell Berry from his essay "In the Presence of Fear"

"When we talk about settling the world's problems, we're barking up the wrong tree. The world is perfect. It's a mess. It has always been a mess. We are not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives.”

Joseph Campbell

A place where thought
can take its shape
as quietly in the mind
as water in a pitcher,
or a man can be
safely without thought.

See the day begin
and lean back,
a simple wakefulness filling
perfectly
the spaces among the leaves.

Wendell Berry "The Thought of Something Else"

John Cage - Reading at Harvard University (1990) - "Mushroom Haiku" and " At the Middle" -

The lyrics to --- What it's like --- by Everlast

We've all seen the man at the liquor store beggin' for your change.
The hair on his face is dirty, dreadlocked and full of mange.
He asked the man for what he could spare with shame in his eyes.
Get a job you fuckin' slob is all he replied.

God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in his shoes.
'Cause then you really might know what it's like to sing the blues.
Then you really might know what it's like. [X4]

Mary got pregnant from a kid named Tom, said he was in love.
He said d’ worry about a thing baby doll I'm the man you've been dreamin' of.
But three months later he said he won't date her or return her call.
And she swear god damn if I find that man I'm cuttin' off his balls.
Then she heads for the clinic and she gets some static walkin' through the door.
They call her a killer, and they call her a sinner, and they call her a whore.

God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in her shoes.
'Cause then you really might know what it's like to have to choose.
Then you really might know what it's like. [X4]

I've seen a rich man beg, I've seen a good man sin, I've seen a tough man cry.
I've seen a loser win, and a sad man grin. I heard an honest man lie.
I've seen the good side of bad, and the down side of up, and everything between.
I licked the silver spoon, drank from the golden cup, n’ smoked the finest green.
I stroked the baddest dimes at least a couple of times before I broke they heart.
You know where it ends. Yo, it usually depends on where ya start.

I knew this kid named Max; He used to get fat stacks out on the corner with drugs.
He liked to hang out late at night, liked to get shit faced, and keep pace with thugs.
Until late one night there was a big gun fight Max lost his head.
He pulled out his chrome .45, talked some shit and wound up dead.
Now his wife and his kids are caught in the midst of all of his pain.
You know it crumbles that way, at least that's what they say when you play the game.

God forbid you ever had to wake up to hear the news.
'Cause then you really might know what it's like to have to lose.
Then you really might know what it's like. [x3]
To have to lose.

The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

quoted from thepoetryfoundation.org

The mechanical disturbance of soil degrades its properties over time.

As the soil goes, so goes society.

- I don't remember where I read these.

Digging
By Seamus Heaney
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney, "Digging

The reason that Seamus's granfather had to dig the bog, was most likely to obtain heating fuel. Ireland was once covered by oak and pine forest. By the late 1800s, only 1% of it remained. Poor land stewardship led people to burn the peat soil for warmth.

Government programs to increase tree cover have resulted in the island now having more trees than have existed for centuries.

Toad Friend

Today
While I was teaching
I heard a rustling behind me.
It was a toad.
He sat there on the earth, tummy out,
Not two feet from where I was,
Eyes staring,

So still he sat,
A vibrating stillness,
Belly breathing, so fast,
Yet the top of him utterly still,
Indifferently still,
His eyes still,

Eyes with no fear, no insecurity,
No caring whether I like you or not,
No telling me to care lest you dislike me--
Total peace and ease and certainty.

Oh, toad! beautiful toad,
You are a friend too, you are the most beautiful friend!
I am so excited to see you!
You've come to visit me, you come to show you trust me,
I have become a safe place for you, I now know.
And you sit there, still,
And your eyes are still.
Though you are small the love I feel is large.

Love Letter by Nanao Sakaki


Within a circle of one meter
You sit, pray and sing

Within a shelter ten meters large
You sleep well, rain sounds a lullaby.

Within a field a hundred meters large
Raise rice and goats.

Within a valley, a thousand meters large
Gather firewood, water, wild vegetables and Amanitas.

Within a forest ten kilometers large
Play with raccoons, hawks,
Poison snakes and butterflies.

Mountainous country Shinano
A hundred kilometers large
Where someone lives leisurely, they say.

Within a circle one thousand kilometers large
Go to see southern coral reef in summer
Or winter drifting ices in the sea of Okhotsk.

Within a circle ten thousand kilometers large
Walking somewhere on the earth.

Within a circle one hundred thousand kilometers large
Swimming in the sea of shooting stars.

Within a circle one million kilometers large
Upon the spaced-out yellow mustard blossoms
The moon in the east, the sun in the west.

Within a circle ten billion kilometers large
Pop far out of the solar system mandala.

Within a circle one million light years large
Andromeda is melting away into snowing cherry flowers.

Now within a circle ten billion light years large
All thoughts of time, space are burnt away
There again you sit, pray and sing
You sit, pray and sing

For All by Gary Snyder

Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

...some prose, from the 2003 edition of a book called "Poets Against the War". This selection is by Marie Harris.


Sometimes the Wider World Can Only Be Apprehended Obliquely

Snakes are always all of a sudden, no matter where I encounter them. These two were baking under a sheet of black plastic that covered the old bales of mulch hay I needed for the onion row. A garter (imagine it wound in delicate coils about a stockinged thigh!) and another I can't name (silver-white core emblazoned along its length with brown ovals etched in delicate black). Exposed and surprised by light, uncoiling, they tongue the bright air. Spiders hurry away carrying bulging white sacs. Ants rearrange their ranks. There has been a profound disturbance. Each small movement occasions an intricate series of counter movements. I couldn't have predicted, for instance, the thousands of reactions to my shadow.
-Marie Harris

A section of the "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost:

"Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

I thought about permaculture neighbors :

"Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
They will not go too far off contour straying,
And shook hands having thought of longer swales
They say again , "Good earthworks make good neighbors."

It's his birthday....one of my favorite poets. http://www.kansasheritage.org/crossingboundaries/page6e1.html

...written in 1926

I Dream A World
By Langston Hughes

I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom's way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind-
Of such I dream, my world!



and if you can ignore the 'google' part this is pretty cool......




one more.....

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
By Wendell Berry


Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

The Laughing Heart
Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

and even better read by Tom Waits

Ode to Thanks
by Pablo Neruda

Thanks to the word that says thanks!
Thanks to thanks,
word
that melts
iron and snow!
The world is a threatening place
until
thanks
makes the rounds
from one pair of lips to another,
soft as a bright
feather
and sweet as a petal of sugar,
filling the mouth with its sound
or else a mumbled
whisper.
Life becomes human again:
it’s no longer an open window.
A bit of brightness
strikes into the forest,
and we can sing again beneath the leaves.
Thanks, you’re the medicine we take
to save us from
the bite of scorn.
Your light brightens the altar of harshness.
Or maybe
a tapestry
known
to far distant peoples.
Travelers
fan out
into the wilds,
and in the jungle
of strangers,
merci
rings out
while the hustling train
changes countries,
sweeping away borders,
then spasibo
clinging to pointy
volcanoes, to fire and freezing cold,
or danke, yes! and gracias, and
the world turns into a table:
a single word has wiped it clean,
plates and glasses gleam,
silverware tinkles,
and the tablecloth is as broad as a plain.
Thank you, thanks,
for going out and returning,
for rising up
and settling down.
We know, thanks,
that you don’t fill every space-
you’re only a word-
but
where your little petal
appears
the daggers of pride take cover,
and there’s a penny’s worth of smiles.

The Beacon of Hope

Here this winter morn you sit and look.
Again, and again, and again towards the window you look
Again and again you see dark when you hope to see light
You look at the clock and again at the dark and ponder why they are at odds
Why does the clock say day yet the window says night?

Once upon an occasion of looking up you see what you wished to be.
What reason demands does not resonate down deep where unreason lives -
that you should inevitably see lightness where once was only darkness.
Yea! The day has begun. The sun rises and the air warms while your hopes aspire.

This energy of brightness moves and awakens all things.
Everything waxes bright. Just yesterday everything was waning.
Just yesterday was the solstice, when waning could wane no more.
Now by necessity we all begin to wax.

But night befalls early and this new found Hope becomes heavy to hold.
But you find a secret and sacred thing!!!
It gives the strength to hold and to keep Hope alive
This holy thing gives you the vision of rebirth and of remarkable growth
Of growth that explodes and transforms and transcends all of our expectations

This sacrosanct thing gives the light which pervades everywhere;
It is the vision of beauty and virtue and justice and benevolence
As all the woes and darkness’ of mankind escapes Pandora’s box this most wonderful sacred and holy thing is serendipitously found at the bottom.
It is the embodiment and the epitome of all Hope itself!

It is venerated and given a special place beside the throne and upon the bedstand.
It is consulted again and again like the Oracle at Delphi
It fails not to impart the vision of beauty and perfection in the midst of winter.
As the days grow greater so does the divinity of this most sacred and holy of things:
The Seed Catalogue


TT

Spring Blessing

One day you wake up
able to name the weight
you’ve been carrying.
Realizing it’s not part of your body or your being,
not essential in any way to journeying or joy,
you set it down gently, without fanfare
in the long soft grass at the side of the road
and walk on
surprised to find yourself
smiling in the warm sun
for no particular reason.

~Oriah Mountain Dreamer © 2015

Judith Browning wrote:Spring Blessing

One day you wake up
able to name the weight
you’ve been carrying.
Realizing it’s not part of your body or your being,
not essential in any way to journeying or joy,
you set it down gently, without fanfare
in the long soft grass at the side of the road
and walk on
surprised to find yourself
smiling in the warm sun
for no particular reason.

~Oriah Mountain Dreamer © 2015

Sometimes the weight has a human face. Sometimes we must choose to no longer be a lamp, lifeboat or ladder. Nonetheless it is still a blessing to set down the weight.

Tom Turner wrote:

Sometimes the weight has a human face. Sometimes we must choose to no longer be a lamp, lifeboat or ladder. Nonetheless it is still a blessing to set down the weight.

so very true

Judith Browning wrote:

Tom Turner wrote:

Sometimes the weight has a human face. Sometimes we must choose to no longer be a lamp, lifeboat or ladder. Nonetheless it is still a blessing to set down the weight.

so very true

Judith, was it a surprise what I got out of your poem? The poet is like a parent. The poet creates abstract ideas like one creates a child. There are hopes and aspirations for it but at some point it must be released, sent out into the web of human relations and there it takes on a life of it's own, altered and usurped by others. I know a few poets who are reluctant to share. It is under the facade of modesty - "Oh, it's not very good" - but really it is the protective instinct of the the poem's author/creator/parent. Poetry take courage and a willingness to take risks. You are a good poet.

.

Judith, was it a surprise what I got out of your poem? The poet is like a parent. The poet creates abstract ideas like one creates a child. There are hopes and aspirations for it but at some point it must be released, sent out into the web of human relations and there it takes on a life of it's own, altered and usurped by others. I know a few poets who are reluctant to share. It is under the facade of modesty - "Oh, it's not very good" - but really it is the protective instinct of the the poem's author/creator/parent. Poetry take courage and a willingness to take risks. You are a good poet.

hi, Tom....the poem that I posted was written by ~Oriah Mountain Dreamer © 2015 It is one that I like very much but did not write I love poetry for the very reasons you mention though...some hit a particularly personal chord and I thoroughly enjoy the poetry of others.....

and yours,written by you I take it, in the post back aways, is particularly well done, I like very much.....

The Beacon of Hope

Here this winter morn you sit and look.
Again, and again, and again towards the window you look
Again and again you see dark when you hope to see light
You look at the clock and again at the dark and ponder why they are at odds
Why does the clock say day yet the window says night?

Once upon an occasion of looking up you see what you wished to be.
What reason demands does not resonate down deep where unreason lives -
that you should inevitably see lightness where once was only darkness.
Yea! The day has begun. The sun rises and the air warms while your hopes aspire.

This energy of brightness moves and awakens all things.
Everything waxes bright. Just yesterday everything was waning.
Just yesterday was the solstice, when waning could wane no more.
Now by necessity we all begin to wax.

But night befalls early and this new found Hope becomes heavy to hold.
But you find a secret and sacred thing!!!
It gives the strength to hold and to keep Hope alive
This holy thing gives you the vision of rebirth and of remarkable growth
Of growth that explodes and transforms and transcends all of our expectations

This sacrosanct thing gives the light which pervades everywhere;
It is the vision of beauty and virtue and justice and benevolence
As all the woes and darkness’ of mankind escapes Pandora’s box this most wonderful sacred and holy thing is serendipitously found at the bottom.
It is the embodiment and the epitome of all Hope itself!

It is venerated and given a special place beside the throne and upon the bedstand.
It is consulted again and again like the Oracle at Delphi
It fails not to impart the vision of beauty and perfection in the midst of winter.
As the days grow greater so does the divinity of this most sacred and holy of things:
The Seed Catalogue


TT

Thanks Judith. It was written for a person who was an avid gardener, misplaced from Georgia to Idaho and hated the winter. I wrote it on the morning of the winter solstice. My intentions as the author , which really doesn't matter, were for it to be veiled humor which reveals itself as humor only at the very end. I thought that with the part of it being "beside the throne" would give it away too much. Did you laugh at the last line, the punch line? The person I wrote it for didn't. She took it as serious non-humor. I veiled it too much for her. I understand that. Really, the hope for the spring's explosion of life is very powerful in the human psyche. It underpins all religious narratives. One can see the seriousness, or "reason" of it and not the absurdity or "unreason" of it.

"Laughter is an orgasm triggered by the intercourse of reason with unreason."
Jack Kroll

.

Long time favorite poet and activist of mine....this decades old poem was written in 2007,  is so timely here in the US...and anywhere really

“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Judith the Donald may take exception to this, thinking that you are somehow picking on him. Expect a nasty tweet tonight. If no names are mentioned, I'll assume it's about you.

Dale Hodgins wrote:Judith the Donald may take exception to this, thinking that you are somehow picking on him. Expect a nasty tweet tonight. If no names are mentioned, I'll assume it's about you.

 

hahaha...well I first thought this was a much older poem.....turns out it was written in 2007 (I've corrected my post above) so I can't even say it was inspired by Nixon....I guess I would be proud to be among the 'tweated at' but I don't think it carries the same clout as having an FBI file did in the seventies

A poem my wife shortly before she met me.

Prison of Iron
Unfetter my wild heart
Parched flames of desire
Ever glaring, midnight moonless, besieging walls,
Ever watching, lest the hell-chains slip
To lie silent on the frigid, footworn, stones,
Captive in this dismal cage,
Mute to the swell and fall of haunting desire,
Burrowed deep within my casket
Where burning love flickers to forget
All hope,
Realized, radiant love, shall it ever allude my touch?
Or shall I curse the day I was born in bondage
To relish fragrant apparitions
Of unrequited love
Tuesday, July 8, 1997 – M. Deborah Beris


A Poem she wrote after we were together and later would marry.
The Way I love You
No one wil ever marvel you, as in
the way I love you.

Silken words you weave incisively
into the chasm,
that abysmal grotto
that is bent
on the annihilation
of my soul.

Your sovereign hand apprehend the
thief as you lead me to exodus.

In this way I love you,
for your gifted perception
in the way you counsel and guide me.

Yearning years, resigned
I waited for a man
to be equally united.

Impatient, obliging, never loyal
to my secret self,
I cheated myself until
now, when I feel the way I love you.

The impenetrable pass of my heart is
rent,
crushed
by your
strong nature I speak in your spectral eyes.

I love you in a way that no
other
will.

Completely

The way I love you.
Monday, June 15, 1998 – M. Deborah Beris

My wife passed away unexpectedly 38 days ago and her family has tried very hard to erase me but they cannot erase that.  While this may seem sad, it is not as she shared 20 wonderful years and I was blessed as the target of her love.

Harry Soloman wrote:

My wife passed away unexpectedly 38 days ago and her family has tried very hard to erase me but they cannot erase that.  While this may seem sad, it is not as she shared 20 wonderful years and I was blessed as the target of her love.

So sorry to hear that.

Harry, so sorry you have lost the love of your life....what beautiful poems to have in her memory...she was a quite talented poet...

Well, because I've screwed my memory up in several ways and because I didn't see them when I scrolled over these two pages, I'm going post a few of my poems here for your critique, enjoyment or even derision.


Three Feet Ahead

The pace measured in steady footfalls
Seems to me the more natural.
With limbs that stretch only so far
My step followed by step
Affords a view of the world unblurred.
This pace reveals the Creator’s love;
A love expressed in provision of abundance.
Bending dew-covered blades of green
My feet carry me by the yard, not the mile.
Progress understood by a different scale.

Cackles and clucks are wind carried
With fresh odor only to be interrupted
By smells of the chicken run, sharp and musky.
Low eastern sun bathes Orpington and Plymouth
Inviting them to a new free day.
Simultaneously communal and independent,
The flock subdivides and scatters
Staking claim to scratching patches
Fulfilling their own food-web role
Pecking larvae, seed, and grit.

A pitchfork of hay is a unit of commerce
Where compost, bedding, and gut are the banks.
Here helping hands freely given are more valued
Than slips of greasy paper, tattered and creased.
Things are noticed here, methods different
As life is divided by seasons, not minutes.
There is no fear of the time necessary
To walk and return favor to a neighbor
Exchanging a tool with a smile of gratitude
For helping stand up a barn wall or two.

The distance from back door to barn
Is no great distance to the world,
But a world exists between, nonetheless.
Where else can you hear jay and cardinal
Squawk at the grey squirrel as he performs
His own high-wire act on thin tree branches?
This world where tomato and cucumber vine and stretch
To their potential only to be plucked, jarred and pickled.
Dill weed grows tall here and fills the nostril
And floods the mind with flashbacks of childhood.

Strides taken here are not a striving or a straining.
Pace is not considered but allows my mind
To ponder if kale is ready, if eggs are nestled,
Or if my hand needs to feel the familiar handle of hoe.
Chores done in the time necessary, not more not less,
But the right amount of time that affords a view
Of design that is identifiable as work of the Divine.
Each of my steps in this place leads me onward
Without worry or dread but paced
Knowing the journey is eternal.

Restless Winter Mind

by Dan Grubbs

My mind is restless most in winter
when the cold and sleet sting my skin like nettle.
Nostalgia for autumn’s wonder is joined
in my mind with spring’s promise
of plant and project anxious for beginnings.
Warm forced air blankets me as I stare
out the window on the brown pasture and planting beds
numb with a lattice of frozen crystals.
Whitetail and cardinal are my companions
during the short days that end like a favorite song.
Thoughts of the present seem as gossamer borne
as a cobweb broken loose from barn post.

Wrestling to capture and hold winter-thoughts
require concerted focus as they are often
displaced by images of green growing things,
thunderheads, and a network of lightning
erupting across a grey sky synapse like.
Fleeting are thoughts of preparation and repairs
conducted in a frigid workshop as steel tools
are cold and heavy in hand and loud in the ear.

Though I know winter is necessary, casual dread builds in me
after Thanksgiving and refuses to wane until supplanted
by blossoming crabapple and budding grape vine.
Though stocked pantry should salve me,
visions of that giant boiling yellow orb warming
my cheeks and shoulders bring pangs of yearning.
The memory of a sweat-soaked shirt;
the smell of finished compost feel as comforting
and luxurious as the finest mink and cologne.
To a fault my mind is other places most in winter.

A Spring Storm

 by Dan Grubbs

The boil of the spring sky,
now charcoal grey
and laced with flashing threads of electric-blue,
fulfills the prophesy of a red-sky morning.
Rumbles roll in from the southwest
while the leaves on the grandfather Osage orange
freeze in terrible anticipation.
Stillness is so palpable now
that the laying hens have scurried off
to roost in the barn, hunkered and fluffed.
As if a flipped switch,
a wind from the west nearly dripping with moisture
delivers the familiar smell of rain.

Tall pin oak, sentinel to our north,
stands undaunted by the now blustery wind
as its branches sway as if conducting a waltz,
playing with the oncoming storm.
Bushes, tall grass, and forbs of less sturdier stock
battle to not be broken,
but only bend as the cell moves over the farm
and the first drops smack audibly on the back patio.

Thunder claps overhead as the sky cracks open
rending a fissure in the heavens
that issues its downpour with flashing light.
Metal barn roof retorts its dissonance.
Rain beats down hard;
peonies are battered, flattened, blossoms broken
before they can be cut for memories of war heroes.
Water puddles in the compacted depressions of the gravel drive.

The storm both awful and welcome,
nourishes creation in its Divine design.
Fertile soil soaks in the water
feeding a neighborhood of invisible life.
Not far away, tilled fields gone compacted
force the rain to run off carrying away its toll.
Blacktop glistens a swirl of diluted motor oil and then is washed away.
Slanted, the rain torrents from on high
cleansing a dusty farmstead here below
with its baptism of freshness.

Dark clouds turn to grey and then part
revealing rays spotlighting the Earth.
More vibrant now, the landscape’s colors
reveal the palette of the Master Artist.
Is this akin to Eden, then?
Is the promise of the bow
accompanied by a window of what was lost
and what is to gain?
As the land gleams one can almost forget its curse
and worship in thankfulness for such a gift.