Signs

The curious cheer
of a gold finch's chirrup


The jolt of a pale fish's lunge
out of/into mystery

By The Lake

In a distant factory,
white mountains of sand
transformed to glass:
bottles, mostly,
which somebody left
to be gobbled by waves--
rubbed and rolled
in a sea-green gizzard,
and stranded,dimly lit
as dragon gastroliths,
upon the ever evolving edge
of these high, white dunes.

* * *

I learned today
that cottonwoods
turn roots to branches
and branches to roots
depending on the way
the sand blows.

* * *

Raindrops wink
in softly billowing water;
this body of waves,
a gray blanket swung
to catch the stars.

Window Music

'Tis The Yellow-golding Of The Year

'Tis the yellow-golding of the year--
the lighting of goldenrod torches;
the lifting of flowers, yellow as
crayon suns; the lilting of goldfinch
whistles over thistledown; 
the yellow light through leaves
above the river's gloaming.

Home Place: summer scenes

Back Porch

White Shed and Sycamore

 

 

 

Window: back bedroom at Sunrise

Through the Window: back bedroom at sunrise

Field Explorations

When I hear the phrase "amber waves of grain," the view over a tasseling cornfield comes to mind. Field corn is really tall. I had to stand on the bench on the back porch to get this picture.

Over

 

 

 

Inside

Looking Up

Summer Carol

Struggling to pluck
the maple seedling
with clumsy gloves
damp from earth
and weeds, I brush
a pine shrub's branch
and smell, suddenly,
Christmas.

Late July

Summer sags with wealth--
the scratchy sweetness of corn in tassel,
the whir and rasp of a thousand
many-leggèd, wingèd things.
A river of infinitesimal droplets
turns air to elixir, to sleeping potion.
All our movements slowing, we
are swimmers in the air.

Sunset From A Moving Train

Everlastings

We strung our harvest
in lines across the corncrib's
chamber: globe amaranth, statice,
celosia (regrettably like brains),
fantastic pods of love-in-a-mist,
(if lucky) sprigs of sea lavender.
Time turned petals to paper
or scales stained with color:
rose, deep purple, a kind of blue,
pink, lemon, yarrow-gold.
We packed them in boxes--
the husks of summer
to tint a winter's day.

Farewelling this School Year

The peonies at the edge of my landlords' yard are unfurling. The petals are pale, with rich, dark veins along the undersides, making them look like blossoms from some master's still life. Every morning on the way to work, I view a new page in the saga of their brief and lavish display.

My internal cloud cover inexplicably lifted a bit yesterday and today. I noticed again those pieces of connection and harmony that are easily undervalued when one is caught in the throes of disillusionment. An absent student sent me, by way of a classmate, a picture he drew of Jesus. Another student typed, in the laborious hunt-and-peck style of a second grader, the most beautiful note of appreciation. My coworkers recounted moments of joy and faithfulness shared within their families.

Tomorrow we will hold one last morning together before we scatter to our summer lives. Only a handful of children will straggle in to before-school care, since most parents will already be taking the day off work in order to gather the children back up after an early dismissal. When they leave, we adults will straighten and dust shelves, wash lockers, give the floors one last good vacuuming.

This work--tied to a school year rhythm--comes with a flow of beginnings and middles and ends and new beginnings. It brings its own pacing, a threading of days with points of mercy to regroup, to remember and value good things which may have been forgotten.

Au Sable Light Station

My family spent a week camping together on Michigan's upper peninsula. For three dollars we toured a light house situated a mile-and-a-half hike away from our campsite.  

 The beauty amid the utility of the light tower stirs me. Looking at this picture, I marvel at the striking white walls and beautiful structure of the black spiral staircase. The light through the shapes in the steps reminds me of stained glass windows in a church. The beauty of it fills me with a sense of wonder and worship.

And all this comes with the surrounding beauty of Lake Superior, sand cliffs, wild blueberries, and truly pointed pine trees so unlike the more haphazard shapes of evergreens in Illinois.

Reflect

The summer's evening sifts
into the quiet pond
with winging of the swifts.

Pink clouds among the fish,
in depths the heavens yawn
when summer's evening sifts.

Our slow perception shifts.
Sky stoops and blesses, fond,
with winging of the swifts.

Odd act of light wave knits
jet trail to water frond
when summer's evening sifts.

Of all celestial gifts,
not least the twittered song
with winging of the swifts.

Becalmed reflection drifts
through all that we have longed
when summer's evening sifts
with winging of the swifts.

Homemade

The jar is a gem of summer labors,
purple-black and precious--
an alchemist's concoction
brewed in my mother's kitchen
through our united efforts and labeled
in my sister's neat hand:
"Black Raspberry
July, 2014"

The jam crunches a bit
(atop my toast) with its myriad
of seeds. The deep juice tastes
of the tang of summer jungles,
of tooth edged leaves,
of brown thrashers anxious
for their nests, and my brother
and me and even the neighbor
braving thorns and mosquitoes
for lovely quarts.

All this with a mug of tea.
The steam hints of cloves and orange.
It smells like remembering my father.

Life Cycles

We each carry
our own little loads,
tunnel and tunnel
through the dark, rich
loam of mind and soul
and history,
kicking up those
tiniest of mountains:
the molehills and holes
which may fell a horse.

I see it, some days,
on their faces--
too young, yet,
for sophistication--
the agony of finding themselves
too much, of itching
in their skins,
like a cicada must itch
just before a last splitting
frees the winged creature
within. It will not be long, now,
before the air thrums
to their singing.

And old ones, too,
have each their own wrestling,
like my grandma--
who forgot much
that helped her know herself,
and us, but continued
to sense the emptiness
long after she could no longer recall
what once filled it.

I think we must all,
we must
(huddled in the dark
against the roots
of our seventeen-year wait)
feel the tremors
of a summer wind
running warm through
maple canopies
alive with sun--
we must all sense the stretch
of wind and wing.

Watching

The east sky crouches--
dark blue gray as Grandpa's farm cats
when the blue tom reigned.
Thunder lurks somewhere
 behind a semi's rumble.

The west sun blares
white against tree leaves
turned wrong side up
in the wind and the heat.

Gulls dip against stormscaped clouds
and catch the west's white shine
in their wings. I wonder--
will all that blue gray glory
pass us by?

Beautiful Places

Places we visited on summer vacation:
Illinois River
Starved Rock State Park
Lake Michigan

Summer Evening

Wonderful, isn't it, how God fills the air with beauty and action? It could have been enough to make earthbound creatures and leave overhead only perfect, ever changing blue. But it wasn't enough. Instead, action and beauty wing across the skies. A small hawk tumbles and cuts away from swifts as the little birds ply wings like whirring paddles in pursuit. High up, a few seagulls stroke clean lines through the sky, like great sail-ships in an inverted ocean. And close down, the fantastic body of a dragon fly darts on translucent wings.

summer verse

Summertime,
when light lingers longest,
and life, unquenched, stays up
twirling stories
through warm and welcoming nights.