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.

 

 

I am interested in shadows moving across our courtyard.

view from upstairs in September 2017.  I didn't record the time I took this photo, but most of the courtyard is in full sun.

overhead view on March 29 2020... Star Magnolias blooming... cloudy day, no shadows to compare

 Need to take some photos of those movements .

I noticed this morning that at 7Am the courtyard is still in full shadow.  I remember that last June

the sunlight had already reached the inner ground on the western side.  Of course it's the world turning, not the sun.  But still...

I don't have as much time in the early morning or at the golden hour to work in the garden,  clearing up the spent stalks.

Poets are snobby about the work of Helen Hunt Jackson, but I think she wrote some lovely and evocative poems.  Here is one of them:

 

"The golden-rod is yellow;

The corn is turning brown;

The trees in apple orchards

With fruit are bending down.

 

The gentian's bluest fringes

Are curling in the sun;

In dusty pods the milkweed

Its hidden silk has spun.

 

The sedges flaunt their harvest,

In every meadow nook;

And asters by the brook-side

Make asters in the brook,

 

From dewy lanes at morning

The grapes' sweet odors rise;

At noon the roads all flutter

With yellow butterflies.

 

 By all these lovely tokens

 September days are here,

 With summer's best of weather,

 And autumn's best of cheer.

 

 But none of all this beauty

 Which floods the earth and air

 Is unto me the secret

 Which makes September fair.

 

T'is a thing which I remember;

To name it thrills me yet:

One day of one September

I never can forget."

-  Helen Hunt Jackson, September  

 

 

My mind moves in more than one place

 but my  thoughts are September thoughts, as I begin to clean up the spent blossoms in the garden.

Here are the words some wonderful poets choose to use:

"Lord, it is time. The summer was very big. Lay thy shadow on the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go loose. Command the last fruits that they shall be full; give them another two more southerly days, press them on to fulfillment and drive the last sweetness into the heavenly wine."

-     Rainer Maria Rilke

 

"Further in Summer than the Birds

Pathetic from the Grass

A minor Nation celebrates

Its unobtrusive Mass.

 

No Ordinance be seen

So gradual the Grace

A pensive Custom it becomes

Enlarging Loneliness."

-   Emily Dickinson

 

"I have come to a still, but not a deep center,

A point outside the glittering current;

My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,

At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,

My mind moves in more than one place,

In a country half-land, half-water.

I am renewed by death, thought of my death,

The dry scent of a dying garden in September,

The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.

What I love is near at hand,

Always, in earth and air."

-  Theodore Roethke, The Far Field

The breezes taste of apple peel

 

September along Route 15 South 

After the hurricane floods, yesterday came with sunshine, lower humidity, and beautiful cool air. Today it's more of the same.  I was up early both days, joyfully gardening.  Lots of overgrown plants to cut back, time to pull up the sunflowers and watch the butterflies. Yesterday, a new Monarch - you can tell by the sharp bright colors of its wings.  Also, a Black Swallowtail, a Great Spangled Fritillary, and lots of little golden Skippers.

Here's a September poem from John Updike:

"The breezes taste

Of apple peel.

The air is full

Of smells to feel-

Ripe fruit, old footballs,

Burning brush,

New books, erasers,

Chalk, and such.

The bee, his hive,

Well-honeyed hum,

And Mother cuts

Chrysanthemums.

Like plates washed clean

With suds, the days

Are polished with

A morning haze."

-   John Updike, September

I am right now eating a newly picked Gala apple from Pryor's Orchard just down the road.

 

Dialect of Hurricanes

 

Hurricane Ida has devastated Louisiana,  and , moving inland and upward, is drenching Maryland with rain right now.  

Here's a poem by  Franketienne:

Dialect of Hurricanes

TRANSLATED BY ANDRÉ NAFFIS-SAHELY

Every day, I use the dialect of lunatic hurricanes. I speak the folly of colliding winds.

Every evening, I use the patois of furious rains. I speak the fury of flooding waters.

Every night, I speak to the Caribbean islands in the tongue of hysterical storms. I speak the hysteria of the roaring sea.

Dialect of hurricanes. Patois of rains. Language of storms. Flow of the spiralling life.

Life, fundamentally, is tension. Towards something. Towards someone. Towards oneself. Towards the threshold of maturity where the old and new and death and birth untangle. And all this partially happens in the pursuit of one ’s double, a pursuit that might even become confused with the intensity of a need, of a desire, of a continual quest.

Some dogs go by – I’ve always been obsessed by stray mutts – they bark at the outline of the woman I’m chasing. At the image of the man I’m looking for. At my double. At the hubbub of fleeing voices. For so many years. Thirty centuries, it seems.

The woman has gone, with neither trumpet nor drum. Along with my dissonant heart. The man did not even proffer his hand. My double is always encroaching on me. And the unhinged throats of nocturnal dogs yowl horribly with the cacophony of a broken accordion.

It is then that I become a storm of words that bursts the hypocrisy of clouds and the falsity of silence. Rivers. Storms. Lightning. Mountains. Trees. Lights. Rains. Savage oceans. Carry me to the core of your frenetic articulations. Set me free! A pinch of clarity would suffice so that I might be born a viable being. Because I accept life. Tension. The unyielding law of growth. Osmosis and symbiosis. Set me free! The noise of a step, of a look, of a stirring voice would suffice, because I live happily in the hope that waking is still a possibility for mankind. Set me free! How little it would take for me to speak of the sap that circulates in the marrow of cosmic joints.

Dialect of hurricanes. Patois of rains. Language of storms.

 I speak the flow of the spiralling life.

 

A vest of bombs

 

Here's a new poem by a friend of mine, Jeff Hardin:

GOSPEL

Someone’s always trying to destroy someone else.

Actively. Without remorse. With a vest of bombs.

With rumor, innuendo. With mischaracterization.

A network, a think tank, an issued report. More often

than not succeeding. Civilians flee. Borders close.

A lawsuit moves forward. A colleague resigns.

Self-interest competes against self-interest. An

invisible hand, a shaping force, a deity. Words are

arranged for maximum effect. In speeches. Prayers.

Interrogations. This new freedom. This new gospel.

and a quote from Thomas Merton:

Everything Falls Away

 This very humid and grey August weather is really getting to me.  I go to garden and am overwhelmed by the enthusiastic weeds.  A mosquito bites me on my back, and I give up and go back inside.  Hurricane Ida, which just hit poor New Orleans,  is barrelling northeast into the country and heading toward us with drenching rains expected to arrive by Wednesday.

Here's a poem by Parker Palmer that I love:

Sweet Nathalie Dahlia -  need this in my garden

Tolle Lege

 

On the feast of Saint Augustine,  I've decided to post excerpts from my long poem Pick It Up and Read,which was published as a chapbook by Finishing Line Press in 2008.  I am posting the pieces that related particularly to Augustine, and then spin off into something more personal.

Pick it up and read,

 

sang the child's voice beyond the wall.

The first word was SAID.

Three children -

a boy and two girls,

played with a dog and a cat.

White children with brown hair

whose plain names excited me

to hear in the air from my own mouth.

 

I had trouble telling

through from thought,

though from thorough.

 

My father picked me up at school.

We walked by the statue of Saint Agnes,

through the cement arch

from schoolyard to street.

I thought about knowing how to read SAID

though, by itself, it was lying alone in a corner,

but put it behind someone,

and it opens its mouth to a thorough coverage

of the news of the day.

Pick it up and Read  (II)

 

 

 

You hated that your

father saw your teenaged body

in the bathhouse,

bleated greedily about

grandchildren.

 

Even then, your joy was not in the pears, their taste,

the juice running down your neck,

not in the picking,

but in the stealing,

the stealing,

then, the thought of stealing.

 

Pick it up and read

Pick it up and read,

sang the child's voice beyond the wall.

 

Don't leave that garden

until you remember

those tears from your body.

 

The stirrings stayed

never left you

haunted you with dreams

of sweaty couplings,

 ragged cries of delight.

 

  

Pick it up and read ( III)

 

 

In October, I thought the paper lied

about Nickel Mines and the one room school

where the milkman

lined up ten Amish girls

in front of the  classroom

and shot blood and brains

on the blackboard.

My red-haired cousin, eight years old,

the one with garden genes like me,

the one who shared a grandfather,

fell still alive, though,

a bullet through her jaw.

 

Pick it up and read,

sang the child's voice beyond the wall.

 

 

 

Augustine and his mother, Monica

 

 

 

 

 

What a friend we have in Time

 

45th reunion of the Class of 1970   Saint Joseph College, Emmitsburg Maryland

Misty Sunday morning, I was listening to this song by John Denver:

What a friend we have in time
Gives us children, makes us wine
Tells us what to take or leave behind

And the gifts of growing old
Are the stories to be told
Of the feelings more precious than gold

Friends I will remember you, think of you
Pray for you
And when another day is through
I'll still be friends with you

Babies days are never long
Mother's laugh is baby's song
Gives us all the hope to carry on
Friends I will remember you, think of you
Pray for you
And when another day is through
I'll still be friends with you

Friends I will remember you,
Think of you, pray for you
And when another day is through
I'll still be Friends with You

Friends I will remember you,
Think of you, pray for you
And when another day is through
I'll still be Friends with You

Yesterday I attended the Memorial Mass for a well-loved colleague who died at age 70 of colon cancer.  I knew her for all the twenty-one years I have been at the Mount; so many of the colleagues from those years were at this funeral that I felt as though I were in one of my "convention dreams" come to life.

Time tells us what to take and leave behind.  It made me think of all the friends during all these 73 years of my life... who I've taken with me, and who I've left behind.

artist: Charles Courtney Curran

Better Late Than Never

 

I took this photo of a Monarch caterpillar in the garden in 2017.  Don't have a good photo of the ones I've seen this year, but at last they are here!

Much later than previous years,  at least three weeks later, the caterpillars are showing up in the garden.

They lift my spirits  in the midst of suicide bomb killings in Afghanistan, as thousands of Afghans and Americans rush to the airport to leave the country, now that our soldiers are leaving.

So much is wrong and divided and hostile and downright crazy in the world, but still we have caterpillars.