The Empty Thermos

One of the highlights of my week when I was very young was peeking inside my father's black metal lunch pail when he returned from working in Minneapolis. Things were tough and our small farm offered only a hardscrabble existence. In order to make ends meet, he went to work as a carpenter in the newly-forming suburbs. He would arrive home every Friday night with a candy bar inside his lunch pail, cut into three sections, one for each of the younger children still at home. I loved going through that pail, removing and then replacing his thermos tucked inside the lid. It seemed like a magical part of my father's life.

We never gave a thought to being "poor," didn't really know what that was. We had parents who loved us and labored hard to improve our lives. And they did, very much so. I will be forever grateful for all they did for us. I'm able to be here at this beautiful place I call Lonewolf today because of their labor, still surrounded by almost an embarrassment of natural riches.

"Labor Day"

Even the bosses are sleeping late

in the dusty light of September.

The parking lot’s empty and no one cares.

No one unloads a ladder, steps on the gas

or starts up the big machines in the shop,

sanding and grinding, cutting and binding.

No one lays a flat bead of flux over a metal seam

or lowers the steel forks from a tailgate.

Shadows gather inside the sleeve

of the empty thermos beside the sink,

the bells go still by the channel buoy,

the wind lies down in the west,

the tuna boats rest on their tie-up lines

turning a little, this way and that.

~Joseph Millar



Joseph Millar is an American poet from North Carolina

Looking for Red Clover

"Lillian's Chair"
           for Lillian Lowenfels

Lillian has just arisen from her chair.
She has gone into her garden to commune with snails
to answer the bird's questions.
She has left her shawl and her cane
and that iron leg brace.
Won't she need her shawl in the garden?
Won't she be feeling the cold?

And she has forgotten her sling
thrown it carelessly aside -
the crumpled black satin
in which she cradled her dead arm
for seventeen years.
In one hand she took her straw basket
in the other her pruning shears:
"That bush needs seeing to," she muttered
and went looking for red clover, queen anne's lace.

What is she doing so long in the garden?
Where has she gone with her red hair?
She just grew tired of sitting and watching.
A vivid light pulled her into the leaves.
Woolen shawl, satin sling, iron brace -
she just walked out on them all.

Left us this empty chair.


~ Olga Cabral

Blue Moons and Snow Globes

One completely irrelevant, totally without merit bit of trivia you might not know about me: I collect snow globes, the more kitschy the better. The photo is a sampling of them ...

In other news: when I was walking down the road to the cabin last night to watch the blue moon rise over the neighbor's field, I heard something in my little orchard. I clapped my hands together hard and said, "Get outta here," followed by the sound of at least one large body hurrying through the brush. I'll admit, my heart was pounding as I walked, somewhat rapidly, back to the house. By the looks of the scat under the apple trees this morning, I think I was talking to a bear. I guess he wasn't sleeping after all. The moon sure was pretty, though.

From my poetry blog:  http://teresaevangelinespoetry.blogspot.com/2013/07/running-wild.html

A Country Kind of Love

"Love in the Country"

We live like this: no one but
some of the owls awake, and of them
only near ones really awake.

In the rain yesterday, puddles
on the walk to the barn sounded their
quick little drinks.

The edge of the haymow, all
soaked in moonlight,
dreams out there like silver music.

Are there farms like this where
no one likes to live?
And the sky going everywhere?

While the earth breaks the soft horizon
eastward, we study how to deserve
what has already been given us.


~ William Stafford




The photograph is mine.

Finding the Essence

Each of these images might be worth a post, but I don't know what I would say that the image doesn't already convey.  Perhaps a small poem ... feel free to conjure up a few words. Distill the idea to its essence. Trust your instincts. Share them in a comment if you will...

See?  And you said you couldn't write poetry ...

Love Along the Grain

"The Grain of Sound"

A banjo maker in the mountains,
when looking out for wood to carve
an instrument, will walk among
the trees and knock on trunks. He'll hit
the bark and listen for a note.
A hickory makes the brightest sound;
the poplar has a mellow ease.
But only straightest grain will keep
the purity of tone, the sought-
for depth that makes the licks sparkle.
A banjo has a shining shiver.
Its twangs will glitter like the light
on splashing water, even though
its face is just a drum of hide
of cow, or cat, or even skunk.
The hide will magnify the note,
the sad of honest pain, the chill
blood-song, lament, confession, haunt,
as tree will sing again from root
and vein and sap and twig in wind
and cat will moan as hand plucks nerve,
picks bone and skin and gut and pricks
the heart as blood will answer blood
and love begins to knock along the grain.

~ Robert Morgan

When Beauty Takes Root

Penny, a blogging friend, has challenged her readers to do whatever they can to establish a wildlife habitat right where they're at. No matter the size, whether a flower basket on the balcony of an apartment, or an oasis in your little corner of the world, we can all do something to create a healthier planet for all its inhabitants and add to the beauty of this world. I encourage you to pay a visit to her blog. Then, see what you can do to meet her challenge and even spread the word.

http://lifeonthecutoff.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/a-challenge/


Photograph by Penny.

On the Porch

Wendell Berry remains one of my favorite writers. He writes so beautifully and so poignantly of our shared human experience.


"They Sit Together on the Porch"

They sit together on the porch, the dark

Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.

Their supper done with, they have washed and dried

The dishes – only two plates now, two glasses,

Two knives, two forks, two spoons – small work for two.

She sits with her hands folded in her lap,

At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,

And when they speak at last it is to say

What each one knows the other knows. They have

One mind between them, now, that finally

For all its knowing will not exactly know

Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding

Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.

~ Wendell Berry

The photograph is mine. It's the back porch at my farmhouse in Ansel where I spent the '90's.

The Secret Life of Irises

         "Irises"

          1.
In the night, in the wind, at the edge of rain,
I find five irises, and call them lovely.
As if a woman, once, lay by them awhile,
then woke, rose, went, the memory of hair
lingers on their sweet tongues.
I’d like to tear these petals with my teeth.
I’d like to investigate these hairy selves,
their beauty and indifference. They hold
their breath all their lives
and open, open.
         

         2.
We are not lovers, not brother and sister,
though we drift hand in hand through a hall
thrilling and burning as thought and desire
expire, and, over this dream of life,
this life of sleep, we waken dying—
violet becoming blue, growing
black, black—all that
an iris ever prays,
when it prays,
to be.

         ~ Li-Young Lee

The photographs are mine.

Roses in the Rain

While on my rounds last evening, talking with the greenery, I noticed several new roses had bloomed. When I got closer, nose to nose with them, I saw that there were many more buds waiting to open. Many more. These are the old-fashioned roses that smell the way a rose came into this world to smell. I promised them I'd be back in the morning to take their picture. So, this morning, while the rain came softly down, I kept my promise.

It looks to be a good year for the roses.

I'm going to miss this man. His music helped shape my life. Thank God for youtube, radio and records. Here's George:

Looking for the Keys

I love doors, and the keys that open them...

"Every exit is an entrance somewhere."  ~ Tom Stoppard




All images found on tumblr.

A Lilac and Shortbread Heaven

Yesterday was my first day back at the local farmers market. In my neck of the woods there is little in the way of fresh local produce this time of year. In lieu of that, everyone seemed to have made fresh bread. Unfortunately, I like homemade bread more than I like cookies and that's saying a lot. I was reminded of when I was very young and we would tire of those homemade cookies Mother made, delicious though they were, and yearn for some that were store-bought. We would often stop at the Corner Store after church and once in a blue moon we were allowed to buy them. My preferred store-bought cookie? Pecan shortbread. I would fondle that package and look at my mother longingly until she gave in. Heaven was not to be found in the Great Hereafter, as the Sunday School teacher would have me believe. I knew where heaven was and it was inside that package of shortbread. Which takes me back to the Friday farmers market.

There's a gal who makes all organic bread with peace and love among the listed ingredients. Yesterday I bought Early Riser. Next week she promises Old World, which is, according to the neighbors, other-worldly. But, here's the kicker: she had homemade Scottish shortbread made from her Scottish grandmother's recipe who also taught her how to make it. Three ingredients: flour, sugar, and butter. Needless to say, I brought a package home, clenched in my fist much like that little girl who longed to have a package of shortbread heaven all those millennia ago. Don't tell anybody, but I just ate two and I'm waiting for my Early Riser toast to pop up as I write this.

If a man ever wants to find his way into my heart he should show up with homemade bread and a jar of blackberry jam. If he made both in his own kitchen he would probably gain entrance to more than my heart. But, I'm surrounded by lilacs on this rainy Sunday morning and the scent is intoxicating, so ...

All photos were taken this morning in the rain, here at my home, Lonewolf.

Strawberry Days

A friend recently introduced a poet who was entirely new to me, a poet with whom I felt an immediate affinity. When this happens, it's as though I've been given a delicious, but temporary secret which must be held and cherished for a while before sharing. I think it's time.

The poet, Max Garland, arrived in this world via Kentucky, where he spent fifteen years as a rural mail carrier. Perhaps this spoke to me, in part, because my grandfather, Moses, who raised sheep, was also a rural mail carrier, although a couple of generations earlier. It seems we are arriving at a time when both writing and distributing letters is coming to an end. I wish it were not so, but life goes on and now I wouldn't want to live without the immediacy of email. So, a price is sometimes paid, a new way emerges and we become accustomed.

Max is now living and teaching in Wisconsin, and is the poet laureate of that state. He has two books of poetry published, which I have on the table next to me. I read from them a little each day, lingering over each line, sometimes each word, as I recall days so similar in their nature that I could be reading from my own diaries or journals.

It's been difficult for me to choose the right poem to share here, as I know you would like so many of them, but just this morning I ran across this poem and knew it was the one. I was reminded of my grandfather and a particular day when I was very young. We walked down the cow path in our pasture to where the raspberries grew, wild and untended, ripe and ready. I recall sawdust on the ground from an old sawmill, the sun shining brightly, my grandfather bent towards the vines, filling his bucket with sweetness. There was a sense of enduring goodness, and I'm happy to say strawberries and raspberries still fill my summer days...

Now, I'll be quiet and let you read.


"Strawberries"
    ~ for Rayford Simmons

Whatever is truly delicious
cripples

according to a local Baptist proverb.
Whatever bides its life

under the leaves, patiently
undoing the bitter

green knot of itself, swelling outward,
deepening, reddening. Whatever ripens

in the sun, shaping itself
into a tiny version of the heart,

the sweetness at a berry's core
leaking slowly through the flesh.

We had nearly a half-acre to pick,
my grandfather and I, crawling

or stooping through the long rows.
Not much passing between us --

the faint snapping of the fruit
from the stem, the occasional

judgment of cigar smoke
trailing back to where I lagged,

knees stained almost to blossoms; the low vines

teaching the body to bend. The arc
of my grandfather's back, for example,

repeated the story of strawberry gathering,
spring after spring. Whatever is delicious

draws the man from the body, is the proverb,
coaxing the long, elderly nerve

through all the meandering hoops
of the spine. Until

after a while, my grandfather
thought it would be a good idea

to rest there. He thought
it would be a good idea to lie down

among the berries. According
to the Baptists, whatever it is

invites us, can almost taste us
near the end. He thought

it would be a good idea to sleep
down in the cool shadows

of the berry vines. Just for a while,
my grandfather thought. Just until

his mind was sweetness.
Just until his body was straw.


~ Max Garland,  The Postal Confessions





On my other blog, teresaevangelinespoetry.blogspot.com , I've posted a micropoem, one I wrote a few months ago, that seems to dovetail nicely with this post. I hope you'll visit me there...


Photograph: http://www.thehomesteadgarden.com/how-to-grow-strawberries/

Trees: Schools of Divinity

My love for trees continues unabated. Every time I walk through the meadow with Buddy and then enter the grove of large Norway pines, I stand for a few minutes and take them in. I breathe their air, feel their weight and the strength of life in their trunks. Yes, I have hugged them, even prayed to them. If there is divinity in this world, it's right there in the bark and the branches.

This morning, I came across this wonderful excerpt from Herman Hesse and wanted to share it with you. It looks like a commitment to read but I don't think you'll be sorry. It reads so beautifully and is well worth the time:


For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the more indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

~ Hermann Hesse, Baeume: Betrachtungen and Gedichte (Trees: Reflections and Poems)

Sweet Impossible Blossoms

I have always loved buying fruit at roadside stands, pulling the first peach of summer from a paper bag and biting into its sweetness. Then, later, I sit at the kitchen table and have another, one with cream and sugar, old-fashioned decadence in a small white bowl.

"From Blossoms"

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

~ Li-Young Lee, from Rose


Li-Young Lee is a contemporary poet.

No known attribution for the photograph.

What I Cannot Live Without

There are many things I could live without, but those that comprise our natural world are not among them. I could do some trading, but even that would be difficult. Perhaps if the trading went along these lines ...


 "Fifty-Fifty"

   You can have the grackle whistling blackly

   from the feeder as it tosses seed,

if I can have the red-tailed hawk perched

   imperious as an eagle on the high branch.

You can have the brown shed, the field mice

   hiding under the mower, the wasp’s nest on the door,

if I can have the house of the dead oak,

   its hollowed center and feather-lined cave.

You can have the deck at midnight, the possum

   vacuuming the yard in its white prowl,

if I can have the yard of wild dreaming, pesky

   raccoons, and the roaming, occasional bear.

You can have the whole house, window to window,

   roof to soffits to hardwood floors,

if I can have the screened porch at dawn,

   the Milky Way, any comets in our yard.

~ Patricia Clark, She Walks into the Sea, Michigan State University Press, 2009

Photograph by Russell Heimlich

More Light is Fermenting

There's almost a foot of new snow this morning and the wind is persistent, as it pushes it into snowdrifts around my porch. A part of me wants to complain, but I also realize it might be exactly what I need, perhaps even asked for, in order to stay here inside a bit longer...

"Spiced Manna"

Someone 
Will steal you if you don't 
Stay near

And sell you as a slave in the 
Market.

I sing
To the nightingales' hearts
Hoping they will learn
My verse,

So that no one will ever imprison
Your brilliant angel
Feathers.

Have I put enough spiced manna
On your plate
Tonight

In this tavern
Where Hafiz
Serves?

If not please wait,
For more light is now
Fermenting.

Someone will steal you if you
Don't stay near,

And sell you as a slave in
The market,

So your Beloved and I
Sing.

~Hafiz 



The photograph was taken yesterday evening at 6:00, as more snow continued to come down...

The Jukebox in My Mind

For reasons unknown a jukebox has been playing in my mind lately along with a few memories. My first jukebox was in a cafe about an hour from home where I sat with my parents and played, relentlessly, the Lennon Sister's "Sugartime." Shortly after that my parents bought a small cafe where the jukebox was perpetually fed with coins painted with a splotch of red which told us it was our money and not a true customer. It was a pretty simple accounting system. The records were changed regularly by a man who came around just for that purpose. But, the song I remember is Lefty Frizzell's "Saginaw Michigan." I have never gotten tired of that song. I still love it after all these years.

In seventh grade, when I thought having a boyfriend might be a good idea, I sat across from Allen at a cafe after our church youth group had taken us down to the YMCA for swimming and general mayhem. Allen is the young man with whom I exchanged a fair amount of kissing back in the days of that youth group; necking was far preferred to bible toting, so that's what I did. On the wall of this cafe was a jukebox that was being fed by the two of us and others sitting in the booth. What I remember was the brief discussion which ensued after the playing of Johnny River's, "Secret Agent Man." Yes, a few fools were certain it was Secret Asian Man, but since I was still considering a future as a secret agent I knew better.

Soon, it turned into the summer of '68 and I'm in an even smaller town where my then current boyfriend was living at the time. He was working at a resort in that same small town so my sister and I went down to a local club another friend's parents owned to hang out while we waited for him. When I walked through the door, my friend, Stan, whom I've talked about more than once on these pages, walked the length of the club with a big smile on his face. Man, he had a nice smile. We stood next to the jukebox on the wall and threw in a coin. What I remember is Bob Lind's, "Elusive Butterfly." We just stood there and listened. He was such a good friend. It's good to have friends like that.

No Place to Lose Your Wings

                    "This Sky"


                    This

                    Sky

                    Where we live

                    Is no place to lose your wings

                    So  love,  love

                    Love


                    ~ Hafiz






Please visit my poetry site: teresaevangelinespoetry.blogspot.com

The photograph is mine.

Every Thought and Action

"Now is the Time"

Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time
For you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

~Hafiz


Painting by Winslow Homer
I hope you'll click on it to enlarge ... it's truly gorgeous.