Poetry Thursday - The Song My Paddle Sings

West wind, blow from your prairie nest
Blow from the mountains, blow from the west.
The sail is idle, the sailor too;
O! wind of the west, we wait for you.
Blow, blow!
I have wooed you so,
But never a favour you bestow.
You rock your cradle the hills between,
But scorn to notice my white lateen.

I stow the sail, unship the mast:
I wooed you long but my wooing's past;
My paddle will lull you into rest.
O! drowsy wind of the drowsy west,
Sleep, sleep,
By your mountain steep,
Or down where the prairie grasses sweep!
Now fold in slumber your laggard wings,
For soft is the song my paddle sings.

August is laughing across the sky,
Laughing while paddle, canoe and I,
Drift, drift,
Where the hills uplift
On either side of the current swift.

The river rolls in its rocky bed;
My paddle is plying its way ahead;
Dip, dip,
While the waters flip
In foam as over their breast we slip.

And oh, the river runs swifter now;
The eddies circle about my bow.
Swirl, swirl!
How the ripples curl
In many a dangerous pool awhirl!

And forward far the rapids roar,
Fretting their margin for evermore.
Dash, dash,
With a mighty crash,
They seethe, and boil, and bound, and splash.

Be strong, O paddle! be brave, canoe!
The reckless waves you must plunge into.
Reel, reel.
On your trembling keel,
But never a fear my craft will feel.

We've raced the rapid, we're far ahead!
The river slips through its silent bed.
Sway, sway,
As the bubbles spray
And fall in tinkling tunes away.

And up on the hills against the sky,
A fir tree rocking its lullaby,
Swings, swings,
Its emerald wings,
Swelling the song that my paddle sings.

E. Pauline Johnson, The Song My Paddle Sings
from Flint and Feather

I've loved this poem by Canadian Mohawk poet E. Pauline Johnson since I discovered it around the age of seven, and while I probably mispronounced many of the words when I read it for the first time, there was such cadence and music in the poem and such joy, that I fell in love with it immediately. I have been carrying a copy in my billfold for many years. Pauline Johnson has always felt like a friend and a sister - what a splendid canoeing companion she would have been, and what remarkable conversations we would have enjoyed.

There are other exquisite poetry offerings to be seen at Poetry Thursday. The theme for this week is "a poem in your pocket".

Milbert's Tortoise Shell

The garden was full of bees and wasps yesterday, clinging to the late August blooms and being danced hither, thither and yon by the gusts sweeping through the garden as I raked there. This Milbert's Tortoise Shell was having some difficulty finding a sunlit perch not already occupied and then remaining there in the scouring wind.

Although they are one of the first butterflies to appear here in early spring, I seldom see these vibrantly hued nettle-loving members of clan Nymphalis other than in early fall, and it always seems to me that their orange and brown and wing touches of deep blue are a perfect expression of the burgeoning season. The Milbert's outer wings are blackish and rather drab, and it is not until the butterfly opens its wings that its glorious fall colours are revealed. My friend seems to be a lateral and a dorsal busker, sunning itself and warming its body for flight with wings both open and folded. Yesterday, it was having problems sunning itself in either configuration.

The image is fuzzy thanks to yesterday's wind, but the colours are simply magnificent.

Writing the Journey Next Year

Here at the end of August, I find myself already thinking of the next calendar year and what mechanisms I shall put in place to chronicle the events of this small, quiet and singularly uninspiring life in the foothills of the Laurentian Shield.

If the Fates are kind, then I shall be able to continue my early morning blogging practice and will write here every day, coffee mug in hand. Shall I also devote a few minutes to writing a daily page or two in one of the beautiful blank books already residing on the shelf in the study? If I wish to begin anew with good intentions and in a book acquired solely for the purpose (a very good idea), my newly acquired journal will probably have to be a birthday or Yuletide gift, and a little preliminary penmanship work is probably in order.

As it happens, there are a number of beautiful journals on offer for next year, and thoughts of the virgin bindings, thick creamy paper and blank pages waiting to be filled up with my appalling handwriting and inky sketches are intoxicating. I muse also on the proper writing instruments for next year, fountain pens, bamboo brushes and inkstones, "rollers" and vibrantly coloured felt markers.

What are your own thoughts and practices on journaling and the journaling process, on the books you choose for the purpose, the pens with which you write and other materials used like collages, art cards, original sketches and photos?

My own datebook and journal choices (at least for the present) are written out below, and there are links to sites where they can be acquired.

Lunaria (Friday Press publishes a lovely series of calendars and journals focused on lunar cycles rather than the conventional calendar year.)

Moleskine (Moleskine needs no introduction here, and I particularly love their thick blank artist sketch books with black oilskin covers, sewn spines and elastic closures)

The Sacred Journey (a beautiful blank journal subtitled Daily Journey for Your Soul)

We'Moon (more of a datebook actually, a publication of We'moon Press. Their theme for 2007 is purpose.)

The original haiku series for this week is here.

Aster Morning

It's an an interesting interval, this slow slide into northern autumn with its grain, ripening fruit and turning leaves, the foraging geese, ducks and turkeys everywhere and the paler morning light.

This year I have time in which to watch the great wheel turn and I am watching everything around me shapeshift and flow in marvellous and unexpected ways. The wind at dawn, the crunch of the grass underfoot, the intricate spider webs in the cedar hedgerow, the dry whisper of the ash trees around me - all offer wild songs, flashes of colour and small wisdoms for contemplation, and I am enjoying every single encounter.

The world is full of small things to observe and admire, and this morning, there is so much to see that I have not made it to the end of the garden. There are flocks of young crows dancing in the trees behind the little blue house in the village, and there are hordes of starlings in the grass with their starry coats and bright yellow beaks. The fall asters are in bud, and the first white one (above) has just bloomed. I am hoping for a few more days in the company of asters and butterflies.

You Are Not Surprised

You are not surprised at the force of the storm —
You have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
Sets the boulevard streaming. And you know:
The one whom they flee is the one
You move toward.
All your senses sing, as you stand at the window.
Summer was like your house: you knew
Where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
As onto a vast plain. Now
The immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
Sucks the world from your senses
Like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evening song.
Be the ground lying under the sky.
Be modest now, like a thing ripened until it is real,
So that God, who began it all
Can feel you when she reaches for you.

Rilke (The Book of Hours)

Leaves in Flight

One can feel it in the air this morning, this changing of the seasons from summer to autumn with its waning golden light and its longer shadows along the hedgerow.

The first coloured leaves are already tumbling in slow spirals into the garden, and these end-of-August nights are cooler entities. At long last, I can unlatch the casement windows in evening and let cooling breezes drift through the little blue house, and doing so has the feel of an autumn rite, one which dovetails perfectly with my custom of lighting a small yellow beeswax candle at sunset.

Every day, the geese and ducks flow over the house in great singing waves, thousands of birds flowing out to the stubble fields in early morning to forage and flying back to the river at nightfall to rest on the waters until the light returns. Although their migration is still several weeks away, there is journeying in their song.

Mama Says Om - Scratch

This week, the theme at Mama Says Om is "scratch", and it may be the easiest MSO theme I have ever tackled.

The word scratch is probably a fusion of the Middle/Old English words scratten and crachen, both meaning "to scratch or scrape" and possibly originating in the Middle Dutch cratsen, all three words imitative of the sound made by marks being incised on a dull surface with a sharp implement. Most of my lexicons have noted the former and concluded by stating that scratch is "Middle English, archaic, derivation obscure", so I could go no further.

At various times, scratch has been used as a slang expression for money, to describe the starting line of a foot race, as meaning zero or nothing (as in starting from scratch) or as a nickname for the Devil himself (Old Scratch). When employed as a verb, to scratch something or someone means to withdraw it (or them) from competition, and the word also describes the furrows in one's epidermis sustained when she takes a headlong tumble into the blackberry bushes or falls from a bicycle into the roadway.

What I didn't know, was that the words scratch and write were once used interchangably in the English language, and that they meant much the same thing. The word write originates in the Old English word writan, to score, outline, or draw the figure of, and it also meant to set something down in writing, to make one's personal mark or signature on a document.

My handwriting has been impossible to read for years, and it is the distilled essence of scratch or scratching, resembling nothing more than mysterious meaningless marks on a wall or sheet of paper - the marks do mean something, but like the undeciphered Linear A language of ancient Crete, they cannot be read or understood.

Poetry Thursday - It's About Time

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places,
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"hurry, you will be dead before -----"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
or the end of the poem, is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!.....
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the Sun!

May Sarton (Now I Become Myself)

Beyond the Fields We Know (IV)

(continuation)

Most of the thresholds and liminal spaces we encounter in our mundane lives are physical entities like gates, doorways and windows, but there are times when these irresistably beckoning places are invisible to the eye and intangible — liminal or interstitial moments rather than places, tiny "aways" which allow us to transcend ordinary life for a brief intense interval and go somewhere else entirely for a while. Such intervals are certainly not physical entities, and they possess no mass or shape whatsoever, but when they appear, they have a presence so vibrant and luminous that they seem real — we feel as though we could walk right into them and strike out for other worlds and great adventures. Anyone who has ever been carried away entirely by the memory of an old tree, a rock, a gentle summer breeze or a Showy Lady's Slipper blooming in a sunny bog knows that sort of liminal feeling very well.

For students of Buddhism, particularly Zen, doorways, gates, thresholds and liminal spaces are powerful symbols and metaphors for mindful living and the plane of earthly existence. Buddhist literature contains an abundance of references to such places and reams of commentaries on them. There is an old teaching tale about a Buddhist monk who became weary of mundane life and walked right into the painting hanging on the wall of his cell. Thereafter the monk was occasionally glimpsed moving about within the picture, but his brother monks never encountered him on this plane of existence again.

In Buddhist practice, anything at all may become a doorway or gate, and beyond each and every one, enlightenment and the Buddha are waiting to be discovered. Through the simple act of entering a doorway or stepping onto a threshold, one acknowledges and makes a commitment to something which is at the same time smaller and greater than the self. One contemplates the intrinsic nature of the threshold, the random thoughts which form there and are held within the space, those who travelled the path before us and came to this place and those who are yet to come. When one is thinking kindly of other beings, doorways and thresholds become gates of compassion and realms of Tara.

(to be continued somewhere up the trail)

Leaves Turning

First Hints of Fruitful Autumn

There were hints of autumn in the air around Dalhousie Lake yesterday, and the first creepings of my favourite fall colours, purple, deep burgundy, plum, red, russet and deep gold, were beginning.

A heavy dew lay everywhere on the grass like scattered diamonds and pearls. The elderberry and viburnum bushes at the base of the cliffs were so heavy with berries that their branches were touching the ground. The rose mallows were in bloom, and the hawthorn trees were hung with bright red berries - here and there, a single red leaf dangled from the old maples high above the gorge. There was a brisk cool wind, and as it went rushing down through the gorge, the river was singing a September song.

Somewhere within are the first stirrings of a verbal (or rather written) bloggy meandering on the wisdom and lessons of the changing seasons and the turnings of the great wheel, but the shape of this year's autumn meditation has yet to be revealed. For now, it is enough to watch and wait and pay attention.

There is a nostalgic Monday haiku sequence here.

Pursued

It was a classic late August day in Lanark, hot and humid, but with the deeper and more attenuated shadows which are harbingers of autumn, my favourite season in the whole turning year.

IIt was delightful to discover this newborn Monarch clinging to the foliage on the edge of the eastern hill, and I crept closer with my camera, thinking that in the dark days of winter, it would lift my spirits considerably to see this glorious creature on my computer screen first thing in the morning. Alas, as I stepped quietly and carefully around the shrubbery, along came three wasps and chased both Monarch and myself a few hundred feet down the slope and right into the midst of the blackberry bushes with their vicious and fruitful canes.

We both escaped, this old hen lurching awkwardly down the hill and the young Monarch fluttering gracefully above. There were scratches but no stings yesterday, and I consider myself fortunate.

Sunflower

Mama Says Om - Laugh

There is nothing left to you at this moment but to have a good laugh.
Zen Master

This week the theme at Mama Says Om is: laugh. The verb comes from the Middle English laughen, thence from Old English, and the word probably imitates the sound which issues forth from somewhere down deep inside us when we encounter something silly, absurd or very amusing.

Laughter is good medicine for body and soul, and it bubbles up at the most unlikely times in life, generally when we need it most. The best laugh of all is one that starts deep in the diaphragm and emerges as a kind of resonant rumble, sounding as if there were freight trains in motion nearby or as if whole mountain ranges had arisen from their places and begun to walk the earth. Then there are the wicked cackles to which flocks of crows (or murders of crows in the mediaeval parlance) are given - some species of birds, like the crows, ravens, magpies and jays who visit my garden, always seem to be sharing a good joke, and at our expense. "Did you hear the one about the old woman dancing in the garden who. . . ."

A good laugh engages one's whole metabolism and delivers a jolt of energy, sparkle and power which lasts for some time, energizing and refreshing us and reminding us too that life is an enterprise rife with that which is absurd, ludicrous and downright funny. There are many times when the twistings and turnings of our existence are so utterly ridiculous that all one can do is laugh about them, and a hearty laugh is nourishing and healing "stuff" of the first order.

Zen teaching tales often employ laughter as a metaphor for the state of enlightenment, and a generous unrestrained laugh from way down deep is definitely a Zen thing. No one has a happier expression or a more infectious laugh than the old guy in my garden.

Poetry Thursday - Advice to a Prophet

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God's name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,
Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us?--
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A stone look on the stone's face?

Speak of the world's own change. Though we cannot conceive
Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost
How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,
How the view alters. We could believe,

If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip

On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without
The dolphin's arc, the dove's return,

These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?
Ask us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken

In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean
Horse of our courage, in which beheld
The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.

Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose
Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding
Whether there shall be lofty or long standing
When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.

Richard Wilbur

There is an original Thursday poem here.

Touch-Me-Not

Jewelweed or Touch-Me-Not (Impatiens spp.)

This morning's hedgerow find is an independent, unruly and invasive entity, sometimes called Jewelweed for the way in which drops of water bead up on its shimmering blue-grey foliage after a heavy dew or a rain. It is also known as Touch-Me-Not for the way in which its seed receptacles explode when touched, catapulting themselves several feet into the air and out over one's garden or hedgerow. At the slightest contact or in a gentle breeze, the five sections of each seed pod spring into riotous curlicues and hurl their large shiny black seeds up, up and away. The Jewelweed's architecture is a remarkable thing, and so is its engineering for proliferation purposes.

Hummingbirds adore Jewelweed, and for that reason, I entertained a native version (bright orange) for a season or two in the hummingbird garden behind the little blue house in the village, but it was not there long, and gardening was a wild ride while it was in residence. By the second springtime, there were specimens popping up everywhere, and they were threatening to take over the garden entirely and elbow everything else into the void. Jewelweed takes very seriously indeed the biblical injunction about going forth and multiplying.

I was surprised to find this specimen in the hedgerow on our walk this morning, and am now wondering whether I should leave it there or pull it out, as it already shows signs of taking over in one of our favourite walking places. I would prefer to "let it be", but shall keep an eye on it.

In Dawning Hedgerow

Morning Glory (Ipomoea spp.)

They were jewels blooming in a long forgotten and untended hedgerow this morning when Cassie and I took our early walk down along the right-of-way that ends at the river. The blooms were vividly hued (almost incandescent), and they called out to us from their place in the long August shadows among the grapevines, the asters and the thistles.

"Look at us, look at us", they sang out as we passed by, "come and feast your eyes on us. We are colour, your favourite colour, your dearest, best loved and most longed for colour."

We never know what we will discover in hedgerows during our sunrise pottering. A hedgerow, any old hedgerow, particularly a wild unbridled hedgerow in the lush fullness of creative self-expression, tugs at our sensibilities like a magnet, like a kite on a string, like a tree full of dancing starlings, like a whole thicket full of little brown cottontails or a golden summer moon. . . .

The Next Generation

Lanark was full of wings this weekend, Monarch butterflies, Viceroys, White Admirals and Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, with a sprinkling of Mourning Cloaks, Pearl Crescents, Question Marks, Commas, various fritillaries and cavorting dragonflies.

Judging by its size, coloration, plumpness and the distinct white dots on its prolegs, this Monarch caterpillar was in its fifth instar and ready to enter the chrysalis stage. Within a few minutes it, had climbed (head first) down from its perch on the milkweed and rambled away through the long grass in search of a safe place to pupate. I shall search for its green chrysalis next weekend.

Last evening the air over the little blue house in the village was full of geese and ducks in flight, great flocks heading back to the river after a day spent grazing the stubble fields at nearby farms - we sat out with our tea at nightfall and counted several hundred Canada Geese, Mallards and Black Ducks. This morning the birds are flying back to the stubble fields to forage, and I can hear them calling through the window as I write this. Here then is another of my markers for the passing of summer and onset of autumn, this joyous daily "toing and froing" between fields and river.

There is a Monday morning haiku offering here.

Among the Trees

The weather was hot and sunny in Lanark yesterday, and there was a high wind which sent me off into the deep woods and away from all the tossing and blowing on the hill. It was dark off the trail as the place is elderly woodland, cool and densely shaded by canopies of huge old trees arching high above. There were clouds of mosquitoes hanging about everywhere, but I spent a few happy hours pottering about and looking for signs of autumn in my native place.

The Scouring Rushes are turning brown and leathery in the August heat, and the leaves felt (and sounded) dry, rustling gloriously as I walked along under the old maples, oaks, beeches, walnuts and hickories. The cicadas were in full voice, and I heard young turkeys chattering in the clearing beyond the ridge. Several flights of geese flew overhead, headed into the stubble barley fields by the Tay River to graze - their joyous flight is one of my own signs of the season, a good marker for impending autumn.

The leaves of the smaller trees by the gorge and the stream which flow into the beaver pond are already turning, and the first tints of rosy pink, yellow, orange and russet were on offer yesterday. Whether this is a result of this summer's heat or the sign of an early autumn, I have yet to discover.

... it appears that I need yet another entomology book, one which devotes itself entirely to order lepidoptera.

Orange in the Garden

Turk's Cap Lily (Lilium superbum)

We are off to Lanark, and I nourish hopes that it will be a little cooler there this morning, that the humidity will be lower, and there will be fewer biting insects about. There has been a truly phenomenal hatch of horse flies, deer flies and mosquitoes this year, and they are always hungry.

My exuberant freckled Turk's Cap Lilies are also having an excellent year, but they do not bite - they nod their orange heads in agreement with everything said in their presence. They dance in the breeze and they smile, a colourful example of Gaia's perfect organic architecture to make one's heart sing in August.

Mama Says Om - Camping

The theme at Mama Says Om this week is camping. Camps are places where temporary accommodations are set up by lovers of the great outdoors, soldiers, scouts, nomads, pilgrims and travellers. They are structures such as cabins, tents or rough lean-to shelters made out of evergreen branches, and sometimes a camp is nothing more than a place out of the wind and a comfortable sleeping bag. Camping describes the activities related to finding such a place, building one or putting one up and using it - sleeping, eating, rambling or just sitting staring off into the trees, as I have so often found myself doing over the years.

The word camping comes from Old French through archaic Italian and Spanish and thence from the Latin campus or field, but for some reason this morning, I am remembering convent school Latin classes and the expression castra ponere which means "to pitch camp". The memory is a curious thing. We were struggling painfully through Caesar's conquering exploits on the island of Britain when I first encountered the phrase, but a year or two later in another translation class, I encountered the expression in the Latin Vulgate (Numbers 10:31):

Et ille noli inquit nos relinquere tu enim nosti in quibus locis per desertum castra ponere debeamus et eris ductor noster. And he said: Do not leave us, for you know in what places we should pitch camp in the wilderness, and you shall be our guide.

From Caesar's conquering expeditions to the Latin Vulgate, it's about journeying and the wild and magnificent untrammeled places which are now disappearing so rapidly from the earth - it's about wildness and connection. It's about Gaia and her works.

Whether one goes camping with cabin, tent, makeshift shelter or just a sleeping bag out of the wind, there is one thing which is de rigueur, and that is a good roaring campfire after dark. After so many years of camping out, the multitudinous cabins, tents, shelters and sleeping bags of experience have all blurred and run together in my memories, but I remember the campfires clearly and in perfect detail - there is a whole long line of lovely crackling campfires stretching back into my childhood and (hopefully) way off into the future. They are beacons burning brightly on the mountains, mesas and lowlands of my life, and they are happy things to steer by. Marshmallows, anyone?

Words I Love - Emergence

It's a midsummer night. The light is skinny;
a thin skirt of desire skims the earth.
Dogs bark at the musk of other dogs
and the urge to go wild.
I am lingering at the edge
of a broken heart, striking relentlessly
against the flint of hard will.
It's coming apart.
And everyone knows it.
So do squash erupting in flowers
the color of the sun.
So does the momentum of grace
gathering allies
in the partying mob.
The heart knows everything.
I remember when there was no urge
to cut the land or each other into pieces,
when we knew how to think
in beautiful.
There is no world like the one surfacing.
I can smell it as I pace in my square room,
the neighbor's television
entering my house by waves of sound
makes me think about buying
a new car, another kind of cigarette
when I don't need another car
and I don't smoke cigarettes.
A human mind is small when thinking
of small things.
It is large when embracing the maker
of walking, thinking and flying.
If I can locate the sense beyond desire,
I will not eat or drink
until I stagger into the earth
with grief.
I will locate the point of dawning
and awaken
with the longest day in the world.

Joy Harjo

There is an original Thursday poem here.

The Barley Moon of August

August's full moon is the Barley (or Lammas) Moon, the definitive lunar observance of first harvesting, grain and wildflowers, and it falls at a point in the year's turning when those of us who live in the northern hemisphere are becoming aware of the inexorable waning of the light which began at the Summer Solstice. Days are somewhat shorter now - as we journey along, we notice the slowly attenuating shadows in the landscape, and we sense the faint whisper of autumn in the air around us.

Lammas or Lugnasadh comes from Old English hlaf maesse, which means loaf mass, an old Christian rite or observance in which bread was baked from the milled grain of the first harvest, consecrated on church altars and then shared among the community. The tradition is common to many cultures on this island earth, and it is one which predates Christianity by many centuries, but it has entered the mainstream of Christian observance, fits in perfectly and is very comfortable there, continuing to be enacted today in many places - I have noticed that rural churches in Lanark often celebrate the harvest and the season with a "blessing of the bread" service, followed by an open air potluck dinner in which all the fruits of the first harvest are on offer, corn, potatoes, summer squash, beets, peppers, carrots, spinach, salad greens and (of course) bread. The ancients would certainly have included beer in their festivities - one of its main ingredients is malt oasted from the barley which is now being harvested.

We also know this beautiful golden moon as the:

Acorns Appear Moon, Autumn Moon, Berries Dried Moon, Berry Moon, Big Harvest Moon, Big Ripening Moon, Black Cherries Moon, Blackberry Patches Moon, Blueberry Moon, Centáwen Moon, Cherries Turn Black Moon, Claim Moon, Corn Is in the Silk Moon, Corn Moon, Crest of Hill & Rising Moon, Cutter Moon, Dahlia Moon, Dispute Moon, Dispute Moon, Dog Days Moon, Drying up Moon, Eighth Moon, Elembivos Moon, End of the Fruit Moon, Feather Shedding Moon, Fruit Moon, Gathering Rice Moon, Geese Shedding Their Feathers Moon, Gladiolus Moon, Grain Moon, Green Corn Moon, Green Moon, Harvest Moon, Hazel Moon, Joyful Moon, Leaves Moon, Lightning Moon, Middle Moon , Moon of Freshness, Moon of Life at It's Height, Moon When All Things Ripen, Moon When Cherries Turn Black, Moon When Elk Bellow, Moon When Indian Corn Is Edible, Moon When the Geese Shed Their Feathers, Moon When the Choke Cherries Are Ripe, Moon Young Ducks Begin to Fly, Much Heat Moon, Mulberries Moon, Paper Bark Moon, Pear Blossom Moon, Plum Moon, Prunus Moon, Red Moon, Ripe Berries Moon, Ripe Corn Moon, Starts to Fly Moon , Still Green Moon, Sturgeon Moon, Thumb Moon, Weodmon Vegetation Moon), Wheat Cut Moon, Women's Moon, Wood Cutter’s Moon, Wort Moon

Abandoned

The rusty piece of antiquated farm equipment lies dreaming alone in a field just beyond an old rail fence on a forgotten dirt road in Lanark, and it is one which I drive by frequently, managing to forget about it much of the time. It forms part of a photography sequence to be called "Abandoned" which will one day include most (if not all) of the old fences, farmhouses, barns and abandoned agricultural implements of the Lanark Highlands.

In its own quiet way, the old plough bears poignant witness to the timeless rhythms of sowing and reaping which have powered, fueled and sustained this quiet place for centuries, and it is a silent reminder of the kind of courage, stubbornness, dedication, backbreaking toil and love required to settle in this rocky forested place, create a hearth and home, carve out fields for crops and animals and forge a living here.

During its working life, the plough would have been hitched to a patient team of hard working draft horses, and riding it would surely have been a bone shaking experience for the plucky soul who probably purchased it as a "state-of-the-art" farm implement and was overjoyed to own such a contraption. From my perspective, it is still art (if not state-of-the-art), and it is definitely a masterpiece.

Signs of the Season

Yesterday in Lanark, the harvest was in full swing, and the air was filled with the rumble of combine harvesters and exhaust from the diesel engines. Almost overnight, the countryside has acquired the whiskery colours it usually wears in August, dusty grey and green and gold. The first flocks of Canada Geese have already made an appearance in the stubble fields, the Monarch butterflies are slowly drifting away, the Staghorn Sumac is wearing red again, the Goldenrod is in full bloom, and the hills are full of silky grasshoppers fluttering from clover leaf to clover leaf. The music of their wings as they go is a dry rustle, as if they were all attired in taffeta skirts.

Lat night I walked through the barley fields for hours in my dreams, and my splendid companions were the flocks of starlings who have already acquired their yellow beaks and their winter stars. When I awakened this morning before sunrise, the ghosts of barley fragrance and fresh turned earth lingered in my nostrils from the night's wandering, and there was a feeling of autumn in these old bones.

The first Monday in August is a bank holiday here in the north, and this morning we are on our way back to Lanark. Coming home this evening, I shall stop at my friend Caroline's farm gate for some of her lovely organic produce, tiny new red potatoes, onions, summer squash, beets and corn. August is a time of earthy abundance, and it carries within itself the firm promise of fine fresh eating, cooler sunny days, long walks and skies full of stars at night.

Angel's Trumpet

Angel's Trumpet (Brugmansia spp.)

The Angel's Trumpet (Brugmansia) is the latest addition to the garden behind the little blue house in the village, and although I pondered the wisdom of adding a poisonous South American botanical specimen to the garden this year, it has been a great pleasure to look at it and breathe in its fragrance.

This more decorative cousin of the Jimson Weed (Datura) is a member of the Solanaceae or Nightshade family, and it is sometimes consumed for its hallucinogenic properties, but doing so is most certainly not advised. The plant contains an abundance of the tropane alkaloids scopolamine and atropine, but their potency varies from plant to plant, and one cannot predict the degree of intoxication which will result from ingesting the Angel's Trumpet - imbibing an elixir brewed from it can be fatal.

I was interested to learn that ritualized consumption of this botanical has been part of shamanic practices among indigenous South American cultures for many centuries. The Jivaroan tribe of the Amazon rainforest brew a hallucinogenic potion called ayahuasca from it, and Brugmansia is also central to the shamanic practices and cosmology of the Urarina tribe of Peru.

One may reasonably expect a walk between the worlds when one partakes of the elixir of the Angel's Trumpet, but a return from one's voyage may not be in the cards.

Week of Winnowing

The sunset has faded, there's but a tinge,
Saffron pale, where a star of white
Has tangled itself in the trailing fringe
Of the pearl-grey robe of the summer night.

Oh! the green of the barley fields grows deep,
The breath of the barley fields grows rare;
There is rustle and glimmer, sway and sweep--
The wind is holding high revel there,

Singing the song it has often sung;
Hark to the troubadour glad and bold:
"Sweet is the earth when the summer is young
And the barley fields are green and gold!"
Jean Blewett, The Barley Fields

It is harvest week in the Lanark Highlands, and the air is full of the grumbling music and diesel scents of harvesters plying their slow way through the fields; cutting the grain, winnowing, baling and gathering it all in. There are old fashioned stooks and bales both round and square in the fields, tidy heaps of straw and row upon row of piled wheat, oats, alfalfa, clover and barley all through the countryside. Once again, John Barleycorn and the spirit of the grain harvest are renewing a brief but happy pastoral acquaintance with their mechanical August companions, John Deere and Massey Ferguson.

I am thankful for the riches of the field which will sustain us in the coming winter, but in some measure, the first week of August is always a week of mourning for me. All season long, I have watched the grain in the Lanark fields growing high, blowing about in the summer wind and turning golden under the sun - I delighted in every field and stalk and frond I encountered, and now it is all being cut down and taken away. I shall miss it all, particularly the wheat, the oats and the barley.

Mama Says Om - Simple

This week, the theme at Mama Says Om is simple.

The word comes to us through the Middle English and Old French simple, thence from the Old Latin word simplus, all meaning single or singular. When used to describe things or objects, the adjective simple indicates that they are composed of one element or component and are easy to understand or uncomplicated, i.e. lean, spare, uncluttered and unornamented. When describing a person or a mode of thought, it connotes unassuming, unpretentious or unaffected - occasionally it is a synonym for common, ignorant, unworldly, naive or lacking in intellect. In biology, simple describes an organic structure such as a leaf, which has no branches or divisions, and herbalists use simple as a noun to describe medicinal plants and the medications which can be derived from them, ointments, essential oils, tinctures and infusions.

We all have our own ideas about the state of simplicity and being simple. As much as I love vibrant colour, simple often means working in black and white photos, and painting with fewer brushstrokes and a less vibrant palette, one composed mostly of blacks, whites and textured creams with occasional small splashes of red or indigo for emphasis.

The simple things in life are enjoyable, but they are often the most difficult things to do or achieve. Black and white photographs are the most difficult images to capture, and simpler artistic works are the most challenging exercises by far - in creating them, an artist cannot conceal poorly executed or superfluous brushstrokes, and there are fewer opportunities to impress a viewer with one's vast knowledge and impeccable technique. Each element in a simple work seems to exist in a much stronger light and have greater significance, and the same is true for the creator of the work - one is revealed in all her creative mastery, mediocrity or incompetance. It is the simple things which tell us the most about ourselves, and facing truths about ourselves is a painful business to be sure.

The incense bowl on the table in my meditation space is a good example of simplicity. Once a tea bowl, it is a plain earthenware receptacle which holds a little sand, and in the evenings a lighted wand of Shoyeido's Plum Blossom incense. Simple in its form, function and execution, it is perfect, just as it is.

Words I Love - Beginners

From too much love of living,
Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea -

But we have only begun
To love the earth.

We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?
- so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?
- we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision

how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.

Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet-
there is too much broken
that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

Denise Levertov (from Candles in Babylon)

There is an original Thursday poem here.

First Harvest