this is the garden

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In honor of Edward Estlin Cummings (1894-1962), whose birthday it is today, a painting and a poem.

Cloister

this is the garden: colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night’s outer wing
strong silent greens serenely lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden: pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms, and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.

This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death’s blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured, as among
the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.

—ee cummings

Stairway to heaven

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MountainChapel

After a steep uphill trudge to a mountainside shrine, the rewards are worth the trek: the celebrant’s inspiring and funny thoughts to ponder; singing together among the birds and trees, everyone speckled with sunlight filtering through the autumn leaves; and at the end a quiet, inexpressibly affecting service for healing of body, mind, and soul.

Thistle, late summer

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Does anyone out there know the work of Indiana writer and farm wife Rachel Peden? I came across her by accident, and some of her books, out of print for a while, have recently been re-issued in paperback. I’ll bet our library used to carry her work before they started tossing out everything published before the 21st century.

Thistle

Purple ironweed is diminishing in the pastures; thistles are down to their last silken tassels; goldenrod pours its heap of raw gold into the general fund.

—Rachel Peden

Wild Geese

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For the anniversary of September 11th, a painting and a poem.

AcrossLake

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

— Mary Oliver

Yahrzeit3Jim

This image is available as a high-resolution print on 8.5″ x 11″ archival paper.