The light falls so variously here, at the end of October

art:  Alfred Sisley

And this poem - so appropriate and so thought-provoking for me:

"Like someone who opens a door of glass
or sees his own reflection in it
when he returns from the woods
the light falls so variously here at the end of October
that nothing is whole or can be made into a whole
because the cracks are too uncertain and constantly moving.

Then you experience the miracle
of entering into yourself like a diamond
in glass, enjoying its own fragility
when the storm carries everything else away
including the memory of a freckled girlfriend
out over the bluing lake hidden behind the bare hills."

-   Henrik Nordbrandt,  The Glass Door
    Translated by Thomas Satterlee 

 more thoughts on the season:

art:  Wilson Henry Irvine

art: Theodore Robinson

Habit-forming

Not the habits we used to wear... but habits of behavior and attitude.

Here are a few notes from these last days of retreat at Cape May:

What is rewarded is repeated...

Humility... what do I have that I have not been given?

Humility - there are seeds of the Gospel everywhere, but it's only the humble who see the goodness coming through.

Humility:  noticing the wonder that is everywhere.

Humility  makes me more able to accept other peoples' corrections... lowers my defensiveness

Humility is the opposite of self-importance

Gentleness conquers the hearts of those who are angry and bitter

 Monarch flying South by the house on Stockton Street... one of hundreds I've been privileged to greet during those eight days in Cape May.

and now...

art by Albert Blakelock

The full orange blood moon shines over the valley.

It is easy to forget what I came for

 That's a line from Adrienne Rich's poem "Diving into the Wreck."  That poem stays with me during this retreat, partly because the theme of yesterday's conference was "the virtue and mystery of acceptance" and one of those - acceptance of diminishment. Another was acceptance of brokenness.

art by William Strang

Here's the poem:

Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

From Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 by Adrienne Rich. Copyright © 1973 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright 1973 by Adrienne Rich.

 

 Also, these, as I age:

* becoming more invisible, less noticed

* feeling the next generation taking over

* going from mostly active to mostly passive

* diminishment of possibility

Art: Wilson Henry Irvine

Pieces of heaven

 

art by Josef Israels

This is how I always feel at Cape May. I am grateful for an extra week here this year.

More great quotes and pictures from  A Garden of Bright Images:

art by Edward Willis Redfield

art by Wendy Andrew

and a poem by Robert Frost, which expresses this October day:

"O hushed October morning mild, 
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; 
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all. 
The crows above the forest call; 
Tomorrow they may form and go. 
O hushed October morning mild, 
Begin the hours of this day slow. 
Make the day seem to us less brief. 
Hearts not averse to being beguiled, 
Beguile us in the way you know. 
Release one leaf at break of day; 
At noon release another leaf; 
One from our trees, one far away."

-   Robert Frost, October

 

Retreat

 This year I am making my eight day silent retreat at Cape May.  What a gift. There are sixteen of us here together in prayer.

Here are some great photos of Cape May by others:

photo by Mark Forbes

photo by Tom Gelella

our house - Villa Saint Vincent -  photo by Vincent Vespico

photo by Wendy Redelico

They breathe in me as angels

 

Labyrinth     Chartres Cathedral

Here's a lengthy and powerful poem by Adrienne Rich:

Integrity

the quality of being complete; unbroken condition; entirety

~ Webster

A wild patience has taken me this far

 

as if I had to bring to shore

a boat with a spasmodic outboard motor

old sweaters, nets, spray-mottled books

tossed in the prow

some kind of sun burning my shoulder-blades.

Splashing the oarlocks. Burning through.

Your fore-arms can get scalded, licked with pain

in a sun blotted like unspoken anger

behind a casual mist.

 

The length of daylight

this far north, in this

forty-ninth year of my life

is critical.

 

The light is critical: of me, of this

long-dreamed, involuntary landing

on the arm of an inland sea.

The glitter of the shoal

depleting into shadow

I recognize: the stand of pines

violet-black really, green in the old postcard

but really I have nothing but myself

to go by; nothing

stands in the realm of pure necessity

except what my hands can hold.

 

Nothing but myself?....My selves.

After so long, this answer.

As if I had always known

I steer the boat in, simply.

The motor dying on the pebbles

cicadas taking up the hum

dropped in the silence.

 

Anger and tenderness: my selves.

And now I can believe they breathe in me

as angels, not polarities.

Anger and tenderness: the spider's genius

to spin and weave in the same action

from her own body, anywhere --

even from a broken web.

 

The cabin in the stand of pines

is still for sale. I know this. Know the print

of the last foot, the hand that slammed and locked the door,

then stopped to wreathe the rain-smashed clematis

back on the trellis

for no one's sake except its own.

I know the chart nailed to the wallboards

the icy kettle squatting on the burner.

The hands that hammered in those nails

emptied that kettle one last time

are these two hands

and they have caught the baby leaping

from between trembling legs

and they have worked the vacuum aspirator

and stroked the sweated temples

and steered the boat there through this hot

misblotted sunlight, critical light

imperceptibly scalding

the skin these hands will also salve.

 

 

art by Jane Newland

the thought that suddenly hits you in the middle of the day

 

art by Moser

Today the Church celebrates the Guardian Angels.  I was looking for a poem about them that was not gluey or sappy, and I found this one:

Guardian Angel

 

by Rolf Jacobsen

 

English version by Robert Bly

Original Language Norwegian

 

I am the bird that flutters against your window in the morning,

and your closest friend, whom you can never know,

blossoms that light up for the blind.

 

I am the glacier shining over the woods, so pale,

and heavy voices from the cathedral tower.

The thought that suddenly hits you in the middle of the day

and makes you feel so fantastically happy.

 

I am the one you have loved for many years.

I walk beside you all day and look intently at you

and put my mouth against your heart

though you're not aware of it.

 

I am your third arm, your second

shadow, the white one,

whom you cannot accept,

and who can never forget you.

I was also looking for an image that was not sappy.  I wish I could find one with a small child in a school desk, making room on the seat for the angel, who is large and brawny and serious.. I can't find one like that, but here's a good one:

I have been younger in October

 

I love Georgia O'Keeffe more and more each year.  Here's a poem I wrote about her at least ten years ago. I know I've posted it before, but it is one of my favorite poems of mine:

Georgia O’Keeffe Looks Over Her Shoulder

 

 

 

 

 

Just when she thinks she’s painted all her fear,

When bleached skulls turn to poppies red as lust,

The sound of something wild attracts her ear.

 

Black jacket, white soft collar curving near

the place where desert sunset turns to rust

awakens in that neck a prickling fear.

 

The haunches of dead lovers gleam as clear

in skulls as in the orchid’s velvet crust.

Dry rattling of bone curls back her ear.

 

Her upswept silken hair declares the year

in shades of gray and tortoise brown as dust

just when she thought she’d painted all her fear.

 

Her thin pink pearl of seashell curves to hear

the desert’s voice, more fierce, more dry than just

as three fine wrinkles flow down from her ear.

 

Such gaunt grace turns her, luscious and severe,

containing bones and orchids, fruit and crust!

Just when she thinks she’s painted all her fear,

the sound of something wild attracts her ear.

Anyway, it is now officially October.  Gorgeous day.  Still far from frost.  The asters are blooming.

Here's an October poem by W.S. Merwin:

"A child looking at ruins grows younger
but cold
and wants to wake to a new name
I have been younger in October
than in all the months of spring
walnut and may leaves the color
of shoulders at the end of summer
a month that has been to the mountain
and become light there
the long grass lies pointing uphill
even in death for a reason
that none of us knows
and the wren laughs in the early shade now
come again shining glance in your good time
naked air late morning
my love is for lightness
of touch foot feather
the day is yet one more yellow leaf
and without turning I kiss the light
by an old well on the last of the month
gathering wild rose hips
in the sun."

-   W. S. Merwin,  The Love of October

Cape May on a late September night

 

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.