Thursday, June 30, 2011

Contra Dancing or Your Mama Don't Dance

The Star Belle (my ukulele trio) ladies are heading out to Lincoln Saturday night for some contra dancing.  I'm watching instructional videos on youtube right now because I've never actually danced like this before.  I mean, I was on the dance team in high school.  I can do a few moves, mostly things I picked up from the movie Breakin' and a couple other things I learned from that Footloose montage where Mr. No Rhythm finally learns how to shake his good thing.  And after watching 8 or so contra dance videos, I'm thinking this is a whole new ball game.  My Travolta swagger and ability to moonwalk like Michael Jackson aren't going to save me here.  This is going to take some real practice, and here's why:

I can't follow for the life of me.  And, yes, it's fair of you to translate this into the larger picture.  My sister and I tried a few moves tonight (she was gracious enough to pretend to be the man) and, boy howdy, I was not doing very well.  She was downright stern with me, too.  And sitting here, I realize now what's happening.  Back in college, I took a social dance class to cover my P.E. requirement.  Most of the kids in that class had signed up with partners in mind.  Not this girl.  And because I'm tall, I ended up dancing the male lead for an entire semester's worth of waltz, country swing, and ballroom dancing.

So, I've got to somehow unlearn the way I tend to dominate the dance floor (and not in a "win" way).  This is serious folks.  If I don't learn how to yield and do a bit of relaxing into someone else's lead, I'm bound for toesville.

Any advice?

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Someone Knows this Dance

I.
The woman in the turquoise dress
she was baptized in scrubbing
the front steps.

She's caught
a heart in a bug net
made of bent hangers
and fishnet stockings.

Buying half priced
seed and wooing
trinkets for the butterfly
garden she tends.

The glass bird sings
too fragile for this wind.


II.
You've really got to belt it out in Nebraska because that wind carries what you say and drops it one state over and by then it's too late.  He's gone.


And, anyway Honey, that ain't dust.  That's gold.  When are you going to tell your story?  It's some fighting thing inside you that keeps the words from drowning in your own ink.  You'd better tell it to God.  That's what I'm saying.


III.
Oh, listen.  How long
till I know how?
Long time since I let myself
go.  Long time gone.
Who's going to call
that child back in for supper?

I'm hungry, too.



Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Yes, I'd love to be in the Utica Days Parade, Thank You

I feel like a kid who's looking forward to all sorts of great things.

But before I tell you about these things, real quick I just wanted to say I found a new mulberry tree in the middle of my "dump pile" at the edge of the orchard, and it was full of dark purple berries that tasted perfect after working past suppertime on an ailing rose bush whose beauty had fallen prey to the most dastardly of weeds--bind weed.  I don't mind most weeds.  I'm annoyed by them.  Bind weed is another story.  It chokes everything it wraps itself around.  See, I don't mind a little pushing and shoving for space, a little argument over who gets the first glass of water, but when you start strangling the life out of each other, well, I'm not cool with that.  

Anyway, I am excited about:

1.  My ukulele ladies, sitting outside under a shady tree, a table in the grass, blue printed table cloth, tang for the kids, and harmonies stacked 3 stories high.  And I am flying so high listening to the three of us as we work through the songs shared, passed around, ringing clear through the neighborhood of Utica.

2.  Gillian Welch's new album.  Eleven years since the last one came out.  Oh, and how this one sounds like something I could live with for a long, long time.

3.  The possibility that my farmgirls and I will be part of the Utica days parade.  Oh, yes.  Count me in.

4.  Nora's sense of humor.  She just gets funnier by the day.  I was working in the kitchen and turned around to find this:




Nora was crouching in the corner with her hands over her mouth suppressing a smile, "I played a joke on you!  Did you think it was funny?"

4.  COUSINS!  SISTERS!  Bring out the sprinkler, sleeping bags, lightening bug catchers, yarn for crocheting through our inability to sit still long enough to catch our breath, fireworks, Julie's humor.

I am blowing kisses all around this joint.

Monday, June 27, 2011

A Bird in the Bush

The feathers had yet to mature.  The bird perched motionless within the cover of the squash vines, head lifted proud with courage and fear and courage, black eyes not seeing mine.  Only hours later, cleaning the inside of the microwave, rag dropped,  I remembered our conversation about not being able to catch a bird all summer, how I could have reached out and held it and brought it indoors to her, but I didn't because of bird-shocked heart beat exploding, that the fear of my hand would kill her if wrapped even gently, even good-intentioned around her warm frozen body.  And though I only passed her for a moment sitting still as if to trick me into thinking she wasn't really there, I saw whole rolls of medical diagrams, grape-sized heart mapped, reckless and expanding under the pressure of captivity, how I didn't reach out because, to her, I would have been more terrifying than whatever she'd been hiding from in the first place.

And maybe she was hiding from me.  Woman walking through garden with eyes bent down always thinking about her feelings crossing things off her list woman who wants more than she should want.  I am afraid of her too, little bird.  Maybe if my own heart, fragmented dynamite-blossom, flashed beyond itself into the hand of Him who made me to live beyond the small world of myself?

And thankful even after preparing the cage that we didn't find her there again, Nora's girl feet caked with mud searching under  leaves, waking the mosquito squadron, and we go inside better than we came out, our hands still empty and filled with a bird heart now flying beyond hands that are so much smaller than the sky.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Useful and Good

I spend quite a lot of time looking for things God has put in my path as a way to help me out.  This shouldn't be hard to do, but I'm stubborn and spend most of my time thinking that I've "earned" the good things life gives me.  I'm pretty dense a lot of the time.  But I'm working on it.

I remember one night last summer, I was really craving steak for supper.  I didn't have any steak, and I doubted whoever owned the cattle across the way would appreciate my "borrowing" one of them for the night.  So, I let the idea go.  About an hour later, I hear a knock at the door.  There are only a few types of callers here:  neighbors stopping by to retrieve their dogs, hog semen delivery people, guys wondering if you were the folks who needed the new grain bin, and apparently, frozen steak salesmen.  Yep, at my door was a frozen steak salesman who decided that even though most folks in these parts raise and process their own beef, he thought he'd try a couple dirt roads just for the hay of it.  I think my knees went a little weak when he asked if I wanted to try one of his steaks--for free.  I mumbled something he recognized as affirmative and handed me a frozen steak and drove off.  I know.  Sometimes that "still, quiet voice" speaks a little louder than usual.  The frozen steak episode set me to thinking more about how everything that passes through my hands is from the Father.

I don't need much, and for this I'm grateful.  (I write this and go back thinking it sounds arrogant.  Forgive me if it does.)  I think growing up with folks whose checking account balance was usually one or two decimals away from zero actually made it easier for me to give thanks when frozen steaks appear at my door.  I'm sure my mom, who would charge packages of summer sausage and cans of nuts on the Walgreens charge card (the only one they could get) when the cupboards were empty, felt differently.  But I don't really think so.  I think she had something better than money.  She had kids and a lot of love, and these gifts, the ones that passed through her hands, were the desires of her heart.  And these things that pass through my hands, they too must be the desires of my heart, even when I don't know it.  What my heart desires:

1.  Simple beauty.


2.  Homemade living.  To learn how to make my own soap.  (Building my supplies from finds at Et. Cetera.  So far, I've spent about 3 bucks.)


3.  To grow things good from the garden and give thanks for the miracle of it, one I can't begin to comprehend though I see it daily.


4.  To love the animals He's made.  This includes the possums and raccoons that eat here each night.


5.  To give thanks for this warm place to rest and be near Him.


6.  To spend some time each day cooking something simple and good for the body, which the soul must wear for a time.


7.  To study, to be moved, to believe, to hear, to learn, to do, to teach, to live.  His word.


8.  To never leave a gift unused.  (Okay, this picture is confusing.  It's the cap off a juice bottle, and it makes an excellent pan-scrubber when you have the baked-on, caked-on blues from all that good food you're cooking.)


9.  To not fear butter or sugar or heavy cream.  To really taste and see His sweetness.


10.  To make a space for Nora that she loves.


11.   I don't know the words for this one.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Movie Night

After a long week of sickness, and worrying, and thinking too much, and trying too hard, I believe I will watch this here movie that came in the mail today.  I won't tell you what it is, but I will say that it's a series directed by Michael Landon Jr.

Women wear bonnets and walk through fields of wildflowers.  Men chop wood and offer reliable advice to anyone who needs help.  Children do lots of chores.

Anyway, I hope this Saturday night finds you with something restful to watch and something crunchy to eat.

Love,
Lisa

Friday, June 24, 2011

Nora's Birds


Grandma found a T-shirt at Orscheln's and I found a yard of chicken fabric at The Quilt Basket, and when we combined them, this was the (absolutely fabulous) result.  
"I Love Chicks."  
Sometimes I'll see her holding both her hands over the chicks.


Today, Nora took quite a few pictures of birds in the trees and at the feeders, which inspired us to make a bird observation book.  We went out to the orchard and set up camp with a box of crayons and the smell of grass so real I had to dream.





And as Nora prays, "Thank you, God, for this love."  (And when she's been sick, and we've been indoors for most of the day, and we quarrel like caged birds do, it's not easy, but this is real and I wouldn't trade it for any dream.)

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Littles from the Day

1.  Radishes pulled and washed and trimmed and sliced and soaked overnight in salted water.  In the morning, Nora and I added the celery and mustard seed (that grows in all our hearts "so that the birds of the air can nest under its shade"), the vinegar and sugar brought to a boil, packed in sterile glass jars because this is the way to preserve the gift.  And this gift is particularly delicious even if the pickles are pink.


2.  Remember those old dressers I told you about as a way to make myself accountable for painting them?  They're done.  It only took one coat of Kilz, 3 coats of "Fuzzy Sheep" and some sort of "antiquing" paint that's supposed to make old stuff that you painted to look new look old again.  Don't ask me.  I just buy the stuff.   (Sidenote: When I told Nora I was painting the dressers fuzzy sheep, she got excited in that quiet kind of way she does.  She'd come check on my progress until finally she said, "These aren't looking like sheep at all.  You need to glue some cotton balls to them and add a head, some feet and a tail."  I need to remodel more often.)  I don't know if I like them or not yet.  I suppose I'll find out over the next 20 years.


3.  Ila's Tiger Lilies are here.  The vases in the house have been empty for the last couple of weeks.  I'm looking forward to having flowers in the house again.


4.  Nora is feeling much better (despite her raspy voice).  I needed to get a few things done (hunter gathering at the local grocery store) but I didn't want to subject her to the public just yet, so we drove to York and Mom watched her while I foraged for crackers and ran packages of frozen chicken off of cliffs.  We stayed for supper, sitting outside on the porch.  Grilled T-Bones, deviled eggs, baked potatoes, rhubarb crisp.  Nora's face was covered in healthy, summer dirt smudges from playing outside.  She had an ice cream cone after supper and the ice cream somehow washed the dirt off.  It's a mystery to me, too.  One I won't work too hard to solve.

5.  [                                                                                                          ]

6.  And a quick list: New music for drive-thinking, laughing with the gardening geeks who host the Backyard Farmer and realizing that I'd become one of them ("Ha!  More than one zucchini plant!  Oh, man.  That's hilarious."), ukulele gigs in the future, fireflies and bringing in the groceries, contra dancing, good people I love loving, and:

How the entire world is so green right now I can hardly drive a car safely down Hwy. 34.
 

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Weeding: The Literal and Figurative Scoop

Be gentle:  You'll be focusing on the problems but never lose track of the useful thing you are protecting in the process.  "Everything must go" will not work in the garden in the same way it can't work in life. 

Carrots:  Pull back the carrot top with one hand as if you are brushing bangs away from eyes and run a finger along the edge where the brome grass has taken hold.  Dig the fingers in and pull straight up with the roots because the roots will remember who they are.  Toss to the bucket you'll dump in the compost unless the weed has already gone to seed.  If this is the case, dump it far, far away from everyone and everything you care about.  

Some of the weeds will be beautiful:  tiny blue flower, the purple flower of the milkweed plant that calls the monarch home, the purple of African Violet.  I suppose it's up to you.  Do you like them there?  If so, let them be.  A weed is simply any plant in the wrong place.  


I don't have time to do this:  You don't have to weed everything at once.  Like your own life, it's impossible to address everything that's been ailing you in a single sitting.  Take it a little bit at a time, honey.

"Don't go.  I love you.":  Make sure you aren't pulling up something you actually planted.  I've done this before: mindlessly thrashing through only to look down in horror at the eggplant in my hand, the one I'd been nurturing from seed to stem for the last 3 months.
This relates to the previous subject:  Don't step on the good guys.   Yeah.  I've done that, too.


Rain:  When the water leaves the ground crumbly black, do your work then.  The water works the deep things loose and your problems will be easier to address.  (I don't need to say anything about crying right now, right?)

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Just Say "Thank you."

 1.  Nora's temperature went up to 104.3 last night.  Mom and I cooled and comforted.  Today, her voice is still raspy, but she is at least back to a normal temperature for human beings.

2.  The tornado that passed didn't hurt anyone.  My mom wants me to tell everyone that she was using the zoom lens on that picture.  It just looked like we were close to a tornado.  We were actually a whole 6 miles away.



3.  No, I'm never alone.  I know this.  Sometimes God and I argue about how my life should be unfolding.   I'm sure you know what I mean.  Anyway, I figured out how to quiet that voice, the one that said everything would just go to waste:

You are officially invited to visit all summer and harvest some fresh, organic veggies for you and your family or a family you know who is in need.  I'll teach you how to pick green beans and lettuce.  In season right now:  buttercrunch lettuce, dill, cilantro, mulberries, radishes.  If I've got some baked goods, I'll probably make you take some of those, too.  Please share with me the gifts that God has given.  Nothing ever goes to waste as long as we make sure not to keep it to ourselves or fail to plant it in the first place.

Things to look forward to later in the summer:  Canning demonstrations (salsa, jam), lessons about how to save your own seeds, planning and planting your own garden, soap making, crochet.  If you live far away, we have a guest room and plenty of open space for pitching tents, too.



4.  So, I'm working on earning merit badges for this farmgirl league of which I've been a member for over a year now.  I recently earned 5 new ones for all sorts of little things, but as you know, the little things add up to an entire life.  Anyway, it's just a small thing, but having a list of skills to learn (tying knots, building things from scratch, planting seeds, sewing, canning...there's even a grammar badge!)--well, it's helping me a lot.  I'm a sucker for practical knowledge, and I think we should all have some of these skills in our "how to" toolbelts.  And for all of you women in our local chapter, let's get together soon!  I've ordered all the books we need to complete many of the badges, and I can't wait to sit for a spell with all of you.  And if any of you out there reading this think you'd like to join or start your own chapter, let me know.  Honestly.  This is good stuff.




5.  And:

Monday, June 20, 2011

Clean, Clear Water


There was a sort of hollowness in what I did today, not from a lack of substance in the activities themselves because they are like prayers to me. But there was something nagging in the sense of solitude that opened up inside me while doing them, some quiet, convincing voice that told me the two rows of lettuce, the whole loaf of banana bread, the rhubarb coffee cake, the orange chicken in the crock pot were all a waste: "You'll never eat all of that."  (Nora isn't big on vegetables.  Or fruit.  She likes Cheetos.  Believe me.  We're trying.)

And I have to ask:  Forgive me.  I'm not alone, and I know this.  I am surrounded by love from Nora and family, good friends who say the words my soul drinks at odd hours when the alone-night sits on the edge of the bed and taunts with a twisted finger:  You messed up.  That's why you're alone. 

This isn't what God tells me.  I recognize the voice of the liar.

I didn't want to write about this.  You've seen so much of how I live and, you know how I've been blessed.  I know how I've been blessed, too.

Abundantly.  Completely.  And if He asked me to go it alone, I would.  I would for Him.  My arms are getting stronger.  My heart sings a lot in this life, hums when the room is empty.

I remember my Grandma playing a game, a story game, that was supposed to tell you about how you viewed your life, how you wanted to live, what you thought would happen when you died, even what you thought your love life would be like.

I remember we were driving in Aunt Dottie's tan van and Grandma was in the passenger seat looking back over her shoulder at me.  "You're on a journey.  Where are you going and who or what is with you?"

"Um, I'm traveling across the country, but there aren't any cars or people or buildings.  Just mountains and desert, and I'm on a horse and that's all.  Just the horse and me.  And a canteen."

I'm twelve.  I research horses.  I draw horses.  I love horses.

"And what do you notice?"

"Mountains in the distance.  The path.  It's brown."

"And you come to a stream you have to cross, but there's a bear there.  What do you do?"

"I catch two huge salmon, and I throw one to him and I keep one for myself.  He lets me pass."

"You come to a body of water.  What does it look like?"

"Calm in places.  Rushing in others.  There's a stream that runs into a pool.  The pool is clean and clear."

"On your travels, you come upon a structure.  What is it and who is there?"

"It's an abandoned cabin.  No one is there, but I'm free to stay the night, so I do."

She listened carefully, nodding at times and at others, a sadness would pass over her eyes.

"So, what does it mean, Grandma?"

"You see yourself as being alone in life.  You enjoy being alone, walking alone and you take provisions.  You plan ahead.  You're observant when it comes to the larger things--the big picture, but you sometimes miss the little things because of the distance you're looking into.

When you face a problem, you do it alone, but you use your resources."

"Is that the bear part, Grandma?  I think it might mean that I just feed my problems."

She laughs.  "When I faced the bear, I was in the pick-up with Grandpa driving.  He just rolled the window down and shot the bear.  That's how I got across."

I have never forgotten this.  This is a story that's become real in my heart when I replay it.

"And love.  You see the smooth parts and the rough parts.  For you, love is a clean, clear thing.  Something that refreshes you and is constantly being fed, so it stays alive."

And this is where the sadness poured out.  "And when you die, you see heaven as somewhere without people.  Even so, it is a home where you can rest."

And now, years later, I can see the mansion He has prepared, how it is filled.  The cabin is simply where I am right now.  I still believe the water is clean and clear, and I am not afraid to drink it.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

What I Will Remember About Today












Garlic scape pesto, clover leaf rolls, tiny animals, first flowers, Grandma's Banana Tea Bread recipe in the mail, a two button bracelets, a little one sleeping who wakes with plans for a treehouse and a rainbow, "So we can see how many furrberries live in it."

Saturday, June 18, 2011

How Does Your Garden Grow




I can stand leaning on the fence staring at the garden for a good, long time.  I like good, long times.  We don't get enough of those these days.  I'm stunned by this growth in the same way I'm stunned by Nora.  How good, how necessary:  something I had my hand in, but something that is not me.  I can tend them and nurture them and love them, but I have no way of making Nora or the seed grow into anything other than what they were made to be:  beautiful, other, difficult, challenging, not-me.  And, oh, how I give thanks for the chance to love this much, where I am pulled out of my own small life into living.  Each day, I am learning something God wants me to know even when, especially when, it takes me a good, long time to understand it.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Our New Swing

In honor of Nora's new achievement, we made a swing for her at home today.  We don't have a ton of extra money to buy a swing set, but I was given an amazing power drill for Christmas one year (thanks Michelle and Jerry) and since then, I've been fairly unstoppable when it comes to building things out of nothing.  We had the board and the rope and the momentum.  We even had a good place to hang it.





Thursday, June 16, 2011

Swingsets

1.  I learned how to swing on the edge of a mesa overlooking pastures and bookcliffs.  I think my folks bought our first swing set at an auction back when I was 5 or 6.  It was some ugly, welded thing and Dad had to tie it up in the back of the pickup like an upside down capital letter A.  Although I don't think this is true, it seemed to me as if we had to drive hundreds of miles to get it home, and when we did, my folks set it up in front of our little brown trailer home that overlooked a view worth all the mansions in the world.  And here, my two sisters and I would spend whole summers swinging out over the land below us like birds attached to chains, released then captured, released again then captured.

2.  I broke my first bone on this swing set hanging upside down while reading, a trick I thought would somehow one-up the other first graders who were so proud they could read now.  Oh, yeah, well, I can read while hanging upside down.  I have always been so full of pride, but this is a post for another time.  Anyway, when I lost track of where I was, my legs came unhooked from the bar, and I crumpled to the ground still holding the book, my right collarbone snapped in two.  To this day, I still cringe when someone says they just cracked open a book.

3.  After church if Nora has let Pastor do most of the talking, we'll go to the little playground down the street where the swing sets allow for some fairly impressive "air".  But my favorite part, beyond the soaring height, legs kicking hard, feeling like my veins are filled with the life-drunk blood of an 8 year old girl, the best part is the rushing wind that deafens, my eyes closed so I become the nameless sound of it (is this what the bird knows?) until I am moving backward again and the noise of this world pours into that nameless, sightless space like intruding water.

4.  I bring this up because Nora learned how to pump today.  And I was watching her with tears because I know there is more to swinging than simply moving back and forth on a chain.  And from the look on her face as she flew, she knows this, too.  Freedom and grounding.  Gravity and how we have always wished we could fly.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Grateful For:

1.  Her honest anger and tears and the guidance needed to respond to them:  Love never fails in the moments that seem to require something else.  There is nothing else.

2.  The gift of two books when a day with her boys was payment enough.  How each book speaks to something I'd mentioned to her and how she heard what I was saying and acted on it.

3.  Acrylics, Mod Podge, canvas, brushes:  we are painting our desserts and she might be new to this mixed media, but she has already learned it in the way she looks at balance, color, space.

4.  Lynn parked on the John Deere mower under the shady tree.  We talk for a bit.  "Well, we're all amateurs," he says.  "I suppose.  It's just hard when the amateur phase lasts your entire life."

5.  [                                                                                                ]

6.  Her courage.  How she allows God to speak first.  How she did it for me.  How.  There aren't enough words to say it yet.

7.  Remembering suddenly now that he said they had put a toad in the sandbox and shut the lid.  And it hasn't happened yet, but how I walked out into the Nebraska night well past midnight with a princess flashlight so I could set him free.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

It Will Just Have to Wait



I've been painting the dressers today, so my lamp, which would usually sit on my bedside table, is here with me on the floor.  This is the kind of lighting you find in Sufjan Stevens' songs about predatory wasps and writing while wearing leg warmers.

I am usually so deliberate about where I put things in the house, but something in this temporary arrangement feels nice, feels like the kind of looseness required to rethink why I've decided something is "right" or "where it's supposed to be."  There was a feeling I had when I was 16, and I'm sure you remember it, too.  Something both raw and timid, fiercely independent and insecure.  I remember spending whole days and nights listening to music while lying on my bed and staring into this terrifying and intensely attractive concept of freedom.  This freedom to make a life.

And this life would start with very little furniture in a studio apartment above a bar named the Red Lion Pub, and there would be a lamp on the floor lighting the page this 17 year old version of myself scorched writing freedom like a flame running toward even more fire because it didn't know yet what it felt like to be burned.

And it's strange to think this fierce and fragile 17 year old is still here with me now.  I wish I could whisper to her everything I know but it's still too early to tell her not to do the things I've done.  Besides, I love her too much to stop her.

Monday, June 13, 2011

What Passes Between Us

A woman kneels as she empties the cooled water from the canner onto the annuals she planted out front,  and she sees her Grandma do the same thing, revealed suddenly in the memories she didn't know would become lessons about how to live until she was actually doing them.

The papers saved from each stick of butter, folded in half and half again and tucked away in the fridge until a recipe calls for a greased pan.

When she put the frozen blueberries in my mouth, I went back to Grandma's kitchen as she shaved frozen bing cherries from a white container and gave them to me, cool and sweet, the tart summer kiss of a nurtured tree giving back what she gave.

"What is this?"  "It's baling twine."  "Why do you have it there?"  "Because it reminds me of my Grandpa, and you never know when you'll need to tie something together."  Orange, dry rope: the summer girl  follows behind the baler imagining the mechanical fingers that tie and cut the knot, alfalfa and dust caught in the sweat of her cheek and her heart.  She doesn't know it yet, but these days spent in the field will teach her that work and love are inseparable and that no payment is adequate because it is folly to expect it.  The work is payment, a gift of doing.  The love is payment: his proud smile, a hat removed as she finishes the day exhausted and dirty and filled with some new joy she knows she can't live without.

She saved each scrap, no matter how small and would mend them together until they were useful again because "we are to waste nothing," she said with a fierceness I hadn't seen in her before.  Her life was made up of these small, saved things--the toothpaste cap that became Barbie's cup, my name stitched from the smallest, saved scraps on a Kindergarten book bag because she was proud of me, too.  

If you could hear the homemade wind chime hung beneath the tree that moved the breath of God over a tiny thing she made to record His presence, His ever-present peace under a tree she'd go to at the edge of Grandpa's fields around midnight when the small white lights across the mesa were turning in for the night, and she could be alone, listening to Him breathe.  And He heard her, too.  She knew this.  She knows this.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

A Planned Disorder

"My garden, my life, my poems--
A planned disorder."
                                       --Stanley Kunitz