Babies

We are in the thick of babies.

Four legged ones,
from whom no planting is safe,
dart through the fences, 

tiny bodies zipping through the two-inch
mesh that keeps larger mammals
at bay.

Beneath the water, legless ones spend

long days feasting on pond algae,

one day to become the toads and
green frogs they already are,
in metamorphic disguise.

The two-legged feathered ones all wear
the same bewildered expression
at the wide world in which they are
learning to make their way.
Juvenile brown thrashers,
carbon copies of their mother,
follow her through the hostas,
foraging in the mulch.
Young mockingbirds, 

restless in the ripening serviceberries,
plead to be fed, surrounded
by unrecognized abundance.

Baby catbirds experimentally preen their new feathers,
following mama's example, 
and newly fledged cardinals, 
adventurous round little bits of grey fluff,
are never where their parents
last left them.

Fledgling robins in the grass.
Infant house wrens in the hanging gourds.
Carolina wrens exploring the barn.

Chickadees peeping in the nesting box, and
barn swallows zig-zagging above us all.

I had asked for more of God.
Enfolded in new life and
the plenty that sustains it,

again I see.
God is everywhere I look.

 

All The Good

 

Waking early,
grumbly,
agitated,
irritated at the dismal quality
of interrupted sleep,
I begrudgingly filled the water buckets, and
reluctantly headed to the barn, 
when the wood thrush's song
stopped me in
my tracks.

He who had not slept,
who had flown who knows how far
through the darkness, 
who had finally set down into these woods
at first light,
was singing.
No sleepy murmuring, he,
but a full-throated song that
pierced my self-pitying doldrums.
"Pay attention!" he nudged.
"Remember all the good!

All the good given,
day in and day out,
to those willing to receive it
into their being.
Soul lifted and 
eyes opened,
I stepped into
the morning made new,
once again.

 

First Revelation

This was originally written as a Prayer Note for Oasis Ministries for Spiritual Development https://www.oasismin.org/

When I got up this morning, I had the idea

to spend part of the day in

Serious Study.

Perhaps I would read the mystics,

or some accessible theologian,

or the Scriptures, themselves.

But the toads were trilling
and the white throats were singing,

and the redbud was bursting into bloom,

and my feet were itchy
and my spirit restless and I forgot

my high-minded intentions,

and went out to seek God.

I walked the woods, gazing at 

the expanses of skunk cabbage
and bowed low to examine the dwarf ginseng
and the emerging tips of mayapples.

I listened to hymns sung by robins

and titmice
and song sparrows
and peered at leaf buds
and spicebush flowers

and the trout lilies thriving under

as-yet-unclothed trees.

I sat at the feet of a yellow birch

on a bank above the rushing creek

and inhaled the scent of spring,

of new growth,

of life, 

and wonder,

and gloried in the arrival 
of the year's first Louisiana waterthrush.

God's First Revelation enfolded
and drew me into the Presence of

The One who imagined and then

breathed us all

into life.

I don't think I need to be reading

the mystics today,

after all.

How Many Springs?

 

I am of the age when I have begun to wonder 

how many years might be left to me, 

particularly, how many springs will I yet live

to experience.

How many more seasons to savor the beauty of 

redbuds softening the forest edges, 

or to smile at the hilltops, clothed in their pale green furriness 

that lasts only a few days?

How many more April hikes up the mountain where I strain to

distinguish pine warblers from juncos by their calls, or

early mornings of jumping out of bed to welcome

the first warblers of the spring migration, 

or to marvel at the zillions of tiny toad tadpoles

hatching in the pond?
How many more years to watch the spicebush's early color

wash through the woodlands, or

the red maple flowers blazing crimson across the landscape,

or the subdued trailing tassels of the oaks,

or the olive haze of new leaves on the
creek-side stand of sycamores?

How many more days will I delight in the fragrance of lilacs 
and apple blossoms and 
wild mint in the empty fields, 
of newly mown grass,
or the scent of a soft spring rain?

How many more opportunities to stroke the 
pussy willow's fuzzy buds,

or the hazelnuts' dangling catkins,

or to reverently reach out to the one trout lily flower

amid the sweeping colony of leaves?

How many more springtime walks to suddenly stand still,

and wonder at the exuberant song of the ruby-crowned kinglet,

who has just broken into my melancholy musings?
And how many more times will the catbird's song,

or the peeper's call,

or the newly noticed bank of rue anemone

call me back from such pensive questioning into

the moment, 

this moment,

the only moment of the only spring

I am sure to witness,

to hug to myself in unrestrained gladness

and gratitude.

At the Opening of the Day

Jubilant are the robins' songs
in the dark
before the dawn,
greeting the day from as far away as I can hear,
waves of music drifting through the sleepy landscape,
as if every robin in the world were singing.

Suddenly, 
as if the conductor has lowered his baton,
some mysterious cue quiets them and,
as their song subsides,
their attention turns to
matters of survival.
And nest building.

The towhees are back,
and the thrashers,
and the chipping sparrows,
all self-importantly announcing their arrival amid
the melodies of white-throats and titmice,
Carolina wrens and both chickadees,
cardinals and a downy woodpecker,
a cacophony of sound,
like an orchestra tuning up,
voices almost
indistinguishable.

How can a person think with all this noise?
Perhaps that is just the point.
What if all the busy humans stopped,
and listened,
and accepted this moment,
and its invitation
to noticing,
to reverence,
to caring,
to stillness
at the opening of this day?

The Birth of Leaves

 

Have you ever pondered the
birth of leaves?
Have you wondered what nudges them
from the womb of their buds,
in this seasonal morning
of the year?

I walked the fields this afternoon
as impatient as any child on
Christmas Eve,
searching for signs of life in the
believably dead-looking twigs
on the saplings I had 
set out as bare roots 
this past winter.

Like the generous Sower of the parable
(though, perhaps, with more thought to site conditions)
I scattered my trees across the landscape.
Yet, whether they thrive
or wither
is beyond my control.

Slivers of green are emerging
on the yellow birches, but
the red and silver maples are lazily dozing,
their leaf buds plump with the roundness
of a uterus about to give birth.
The beech and river birches,
the persimmons and the oaks 
are deep in their arboreal dreams,
not ready to give thought to waking.
They will not be rushed, and
care not for my eagerness, nor 
my hopes.

And so today I peered closely
at each one, not
with the eyes of a husbandman,
but with the eyes of a mother,
blessing, and 
urging my tiny trees to live and
bear fruit and 
to grow into
what they may become, 
long after I am
gone.

The Brave Ones

It is yet too cold for gardening
or the turning of the soil 
or planting the seeds that are readily at hand
on my kitchen counter.
The earth's surface is still
encrusted with crystallized shards of ice
that will leave their tiny footprints
as they evaporate or melt into the ground
in a few hours.

The hellebores are pouting after a night
well below freezing 
and the golden ragwort's leaves are
adorned with frozen lace,
as if dressed for a ball.

But the intrepid ones, those 
early blooming bulbs,
brave botanical souls who laughingly
defy late winter and raise their
faces to the dawn,
they impart the courage I need
to trust that winter is receding and
warmth will come.

Later today, when the sun has
warmed the land, 
I will plant peas.