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.

 

 

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