This is plenty. This is more than enough.

 Here are some photos from my garden this morning:

 

"September fattens on vines.

Roses flake from the wall.

The smoke of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.

This is plenty. This is more than enough."

-  Geoffrey Hill, September Song

 

 

"Tang of fruitage in the air;

Red boughs bursting everywhere;

Shimmering of seeded grass;

Hooded gentians all a'mass.

Warmth of earth, and cloudless wind

Tearing off the husky rind,

Blowing feathered seeds to fall

By the sun-baked, sheltering wall.

Beech trees in a golden haze;

Hardy sumachs all ablaze,

Glowing through the silver birches.

How that pine tree shouts and lurches!

From the sunny door-jamb high,

Swings the shell of a butterfly.

Scrape of insect violins

Through the stubble shrilly dins.

Every blade's a minaret

Where a small muezzin's set,

Loudly calling us to pray

At the miracle of day.

Then the purple-lidded night

Westering comes, her footsteps light

Guided by the radiant boon

Of a sickle-shaped new moon."

-   Amy Lowell, Late September

 

 

" 'I grow old, I grow old,' the garden says.  It is nearly October.  The bean leaves grow paler, now lime, no yellow, no leprous, dissolving before my eyes.  The pods curl and do not grow, turn limp and blacken.  The potato vines wither and the tubers huddle underground in their rough weather-proof jackets, waiting to be dug.  The last tomatoes ripen and split on the vine; it takes days for them to turn fully now, and a few of the green ones are beginning to fall off."

-   Robert Finch

Michaelmas

 Feast of the Archangels

These weeks - the last of September and first of October, are filled by the Church with memorable feast days.

Today is Michaelmas - the feast of St. Michael,  and also Gabriel and Raphael, known as the Archangels.

I love this poem by St. Hildegard of Bingen:

Antiphon for the Angels

 

Spirited light! on the edge

of the Presence your yearning

burns in the secret darkness,

 

O angels, insatiably

into God’s gaze.

 

Perversity

 

could not touch your beauty;

you are essential joy.

 

But your lost companion,

angel of the crooked

wings – he sought the summit,

shot down the depths of God

and plummeted past Adam –

that a mud – bound spirit might soar.

 

Ben Johnson writes about September 29, known as Michael's feast, or Michaelmas:

"Michaelmas, or the Feast of Michael and All Angels, is celebrated on the 29th of September every year. As it falls near the equinox, the day is associated with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days; in England, it is one of the “quarter days”.

There are traditionally four “quarter days” in a year (Lady Day (25th March), Midsummer (24th June), Michaelmas (29th September) and Christmas (25th December)). They are spaced three months apart, on religious festivals, usually close to the solstices or equinoxes. They were the four dates on which servants were hired, rents due or leases begun. It used to be said that harvest had to be completed by Michaelmas, almost like the marking of the end of the productive season and the beginning of the new cycle of farming. 

...St Michael is one of the principal angelic warriors, protector against the dark of the night and the Archangel who fought against Satan and his evil angels. As Michaelmas is the time that the darker nights and colder days begin – the edge into winter – the celebration of Michaelmas is associated with encouraging protection during these dark months. It was believed that negative forces were stronger in darkness and so families would require stronger defences during the later months of the year. "    ( source:  Historic UK)

Dark mornings staying dark longer

 

painting from Etsy   Jamie's Art

Here's a wonderful poem by Mary Jo Salter:

MOON-BREATH

 

Dark mornings staying dark

longer, another autumn

 

come, and the body one

day poorer yet,

 

from restless sleep I wake

early now to note

 

how the pale disk of moon

caves to its own defeat,

 

cold as yesterday’s fish

left over in the pan,

 

or miserly as a sliver

of dried soap in a dish.

 

Oh for a sparkling froth

of cloud, a little heat

 

from the sun! I shiver

at the window where I plant

 

one perfect moon-round breath,

as I liked to do as a girl

 

against the filthy glass

of the yellow school bus

 

laboring up the hill,

not thinking what I meant

 

but passionate, as if

I were kissing my own life.

 

 

Neslihan Gorocu

Feast of Saint Vincent de Paul

 

I love this imaginative drawing of Vincent at the Table of Plenty

One of the things he said:

"There are some persons who are content with everything and others who are scarcely content with anything. These latter need patience to bear with themselves." words of wisdom from St. Vincent de Paul.

But I especially love this, which I consider to be an icon, of Vincent and the Beggar Christ.

Here's a poem I wrote about forty years ago:

Vincent de Paul

 

 

Wine and hundredfold

my father’s name,

eating old food,

walking,

the man sleeping in the corner

by your house

smells like death,

but you wake him.

The streets reek,

the crowds press,

all the passages are interdict,

but you walk through them.

Your hands are grimy,

You have slept in your clothes,

You have never tasted ice.

Wine and hundredfold,

my father’s name.

 

 

 

Reunions

 

Senior Year 1965-66   Bishop Shanahan High School

I wish I had more photos from those days, but that was way before digital cameras.


On this lovely sunny day, I'm up near West Chester, getting ready to celebrate the 55th reunion of my high school class.  

I still can't believe it.

This morning, I went to Mass at Camilla Hall, the retirement community of the Immaculate Heart Sisters, who taught me all through grade school and high school.  It's so long ago that not many of them are still on this side of eternity.  Nevertheless, I did get to see Sister Saint Elizabeth, who taught me piano in grade school, and Sister Regina Assumpta, who taught our Glee Club in high school

Had a really long visit and conversation with the latter, who now goes by Sister Mary Lydon.  

I wish I had some photos of the two of them back then, as well as some of the others.

So tonight our class gets together . We were last together in October of 2016 for our fiftieth reunion; just before the election of Donald Trump to the presidency.   Now we are in the first year of  the new president, Joe Biden.   I know that my classmates are very much divided on political lines, for many reasons, and I am praying we leave those conversations outside our celebration.  There's no coming together on this topic.

Here' a poem by Emily Dickinson:

 

"As Summer into Autumn slips

And yet we sooner say

"The Summer" than "the Autumn," lest

We turn the sun away,

 

And almost count it an Affront

The presence to concede

Of one however lovely, not

The one that we have loved --

 

So we evade the charge of Years

On one attempting shy

The Circumvention of the Shaft

Of Life's Declivity."

Beautiful, unanswerable questions

 

Moonlit Night     Hjalmar Munsterhjelm

Here's another harvest moon poem, this one by Carl Sandburg:

 

Under the Harvest Moon  

Under the harvest moon,

When the soft silver

Drips shimmering

Over the garden nights,

Death, the gray mocker,

Comes and whispers to you

As a beautiful friend

Who remembers.

 

   Under the summer roses

When the flagrant crimson

Lurks in the dusk

Of the wild red leaves,

Love, with little hands,

Comes and touches you

With a thousand memories,

And asks you

Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

 

 

The earth replies all night

 

art:   Wendy Andrew

The Harvest Moon

                     by Ted Hughes

 

The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,

Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,

A vast balloon,

Till it takes off, and sinks upward

To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon.

The harvest moon has come,

Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.

And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum.

So people can't sleep,

So they go out where elms and oak trees keep

A kneeling vigil, in a religious hush.

The harvest moon has come!

And all the moonlit cows and all the sheep

Stare up at her petrified, while she swells

Filling heaven, as if red hot, and sailing

Closer and closer like the end of the world.

Till the gold fields of stiff wheat

Cry `We are ripe, reap us!' and the rivers

Sweat from the melting hills.

 

I come to the edge of myself

 

Common Boneset

On this grey and cool final day of summer, here's a poem by my friend Jeff Hardin:

DARKLING

When I visit graves now, I don’t think
of loved ones lying there, out of view,

but of that verse saying absent
from the body, present with the Lord,

and sometimes I sing, not as though
someone can hear and not as

comfort, though I am comforted,
but because song is the soul’s longing—

and where am I, and who am I, if not
my soul in the presence of those

now absent I once called my own?
On a hillside named Mount Carmel

my people lay themselves beside each other,
farmers, housewives, scratches upon the dust.

When I go there—I don’t know why—
I always think of Keats’ nightingale,

whose song I had not heard when I
first read his poem, so, to hear it,

I imagined a hallowed ground I knew,
a place where I, too, was a darkling thing;

and its song soared above headstones
and tree tops out over a valley’s lone creek;

and often all I know is a drowsy numbness
nothing seems to salve, not the quiet of breath,

not the clouds banked by blue, not even
all my worthless, wordless prayers.

At least they’re mine and no one else’s.
Offering their bent and emptied phonemes

is how I come to the edge of myself,
a breath away, as always, from the afterlife.

A song, it seems, finds a path through
the heart. Joy weeps; weeping celebrates.

Breath is an ache, a sorrow, “sick for home.”

Oer Wout     September in my soul

Shine on, Harvest Moon

 

A  full moon, known as a Harvest Moon, rises over Washington, D.C., on Sept. 19, 2013. (Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls )

from NPR:

For those in the Northern Hemisphere, summer will come to an end next Wednesday. Slowly but surely since the middle of June, days have been getting shorter. With the arrival of the autumn equinox comes cooler weather and a change of color amongst the trees. And Monday, two days before the official start of fall, the harvest moon.

For three days, moonrise will come shortly after sunset, but the harvest moon will reach its peak illumination at 7:54 p.m. ET Monday. Historically this lunar event provided farmers a little extra light to harvest their crops. However, unlike the equinoxes, which take place at the same time each year, the harvest moon is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox. Which means it can fall in September or October, according to The Old Farmer's Almanac.

painting by Kim Lockman

So now I am hoping to slow myself down enough to get back to poetry.  I've received several strong messages from the Universe  about that.

art by Thomas van stein

 

It's been 20 years since the planes flew into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center,  and then, the Pentagon, and then, a field in Pennsylvania.

I wasn't writing a blog in 2001.  But I remember the day vividly.

Here's a poem by Joy Harjo:

When the World as We Knew It Ended

BY JOY HARJO

We were dreaming on an occupied island at the farthest edge

of a trembling nation when it went down.

 

Two towers rose up from the east island of commerce and touched

the sky. Men walked on the moon. Oil was sucked dry

by two brothers. Then it went down. Swallowed

by a fire dragon, by oil and fear.

Eaten whole.

 

It was coming.

 

We had been watching since the eve of the missionaries in their

long and solemn clothes, to see what would happen.

 

We saw it

from the kitchen window over the sink

as we made coffee, cooked rice and

potatoes, enough for an army.

 

We saw it all, as we changed diapers and fed

the babies. We saw it,

through the branches

of the knowledgeable tree

through the snags of stars, through

the sun and storms from our knees

as we bathed and washed

the floors.

 

The conference of the birds warned us, as they flew over

destroyers in the harbor, parked there since the first takeover.

It was by their song and talk we knew when to rise

when to look out the window

to the commotion going on—

the magnetic field thrown off by grief.

 

We heard it.

The racket in every corner of the world. As

the hunger for war rose up in those who would steal to be president

to be king or emperor, to own the trees, stones, and everything

else that moved about the earth, inside the earth

and above it.

 

We knew it was coming, tasted the winds who gathered intelligence

from each leaf and flower, from every mountain, sea

and desert, from every prayer and song all over this tiny universe

floating in the skies of infinite

being.

 

And then it was over, this world we had grown to love

for its sweet grasses, for the many-colored horses

and fishes, for the shimmering possibilities

while dreaming.

 

But then there were the seeds to plant and the babies

who needed milk and comforting, and someone

picked up a guitar or ukulele from the rubble

and began to sing about the light flutter

the kick beneath the skin of the earth

we felt there, beneath us

 

a warm animal

a song being born between the legs of her;

a poem.

 

"When the World  as We Knew It Ended" from How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems:1975-2001 by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 2002 by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., www.wwnorton.com.