Leaving my home, traveling alone among strangers; being with my dear family and so soon saying good-bye and leaving their welcoming home; returning to my homey spaces; leaving home again (as I am doing today) and becoming absent from my house and garden… A lot of this kind of drama has been mine, this month. I will write more soon about this week’s travels. I have to say, though, that none of my leavetaking has felt as painful as a scorpion!
LEAVETAKING
On the morning they left we said goodbye filled with sadness for the absence to come.
Inside the palanquins on the camels’ backs I saw their faces beautiful as moons behind veils of golden cloth.
Beneath the veils tears crept like scorpions over the fragrant roses of their cheeks.
These scorpions do not harm the cheek they mark. They save their sting for the heart of the sorrowful lover.
-Ibn Jakh (1000 – 1050) Spain Translated by Emilio Garcia Gomez & Cola Franzen
Tivadar Kosztka, Csontvary Fortress With Arabs Riding Camels
A few years ago I shared a link to this poem so that you could read it in its entirety on the Plough website. Today I’m posting the whole of it here. The poet takes us on a short journey through childhood memories, nostalgia, loss and grief, but doesn’t stop there. She shows how we can honor the memory of those we mourn by living out their virtues in our own lives.
With every autumn that we face, the winter of our life is following closer than ever. Darkness stalks, but I believe each of us has at least one match with which we can light our own “bright fires of love and work,” (and for some of us, even wit) and that these can continue broadcasting waves of encouragement indefinitely.
AFTER HELPING MY FATHER RAKE THE LEAVES
First, I took a running leap, and then, half buried in the heap that we’d raked up, I lingered, caught in a cocoon of leaves and thought. I still remember how they smelled, those castoffs autumn winds had felled— both old and fresh, both wild and clean, the sweet decay of summer’s green; and how they looked—small flags half-furled, hot colors from a chilling world. I breathed more deeply for a few enchanted seconds. More leaves flew as Dad watched, leaning on his rake. He must have known what seasons take. Leaves bright as fire broadcast their dark reminder: beauty was a spark that couldn’t last, the freshened breath of autumn air foreshadowed death. But even so, my father grinned and turned his face into the wind. Years later, I’d learn just how brave my father was, and how a wave of chill or doubt could leave him caught in his own grim cocoon of thought. A darkness stalked him, but he lit bright fires of love and work and wit, and faced the wind, and found his way for decades past that autumn day. And now I kindle every flash of memory that warms the ash of loss. I see his profile still, and face my autumns with his will.
After the affair and the moving out, after the destructive revivifying passion, we watched her life quiet
into a new one, her lover more and more on its periphery. She spent many nights alone, happy for the narcosis of the television. When she got cancer she kept it to herself until she couldn’t keep it from anyone. The chemo debilitated and saved her, and one day
her husband asked her to come back — his wife, who after all had only fallen in love as anyone might who hadn’t been in love in a while — and he held her, so different now, so thin, her hair just partially grown back. He held her like a new woman
and what she felt felt almost as good as love had, and each of them called it love because precision didn’t matter anymore. And we who’d been part of it, often rejoicing with one and consoling the other,
we who had seen her truly alive and then merely alive, what could we do but revise our phone book, our hearts, offer a little toast to what goes on.
In Wisconsin my daughter Pearl has been tending a large house and garden for about eight years. She’s much more artistic and organized than I, about all of the design and execution of beautiful spaces indoors and out. She does all the work herself, even to the point of laying bricks to create a quiet and somewhat hidden corner to sit in, with morning sun and afternoon shade. It’s a wonderful spot winter or summer, and I enjoyed it with Pearl on one of my visits. This time, she had little time for sitting, what with being the wedding planner for Maggie. While she was bustling about, on my first morning after arriving late at night, I made the rounds to see all the flowers that are still blooming everywhere.
Her hydrangeas are gigantic — and I saw others in the area that are just as impressive. Along the side of her driveway, and in big pots, a multitude of plants all grow thickly and complement each other; she doesn’t know the names of them all. She showed Izzy and me this Blackberry Lily, iris domestica, displaying its seeds — something different!
At the airbnb where some of the wedding party stayed, closer to the venue, I sat on a wide porch where giant trees shaded the lawn and tire swing. Pearl’s house has similar ones, though maybe not as tall, that charm me at any time of year.
One day Roger and Izzy, Lora, Pearl and I went to a nature preserve in the middle of wide fields that are being restored to wildness from agricultural land. The asters provided the brightest splashes of color in the midst of the various drying grasses and seed heads, and bees were all over the several species of them.
Most of the Gray-headed Coneflowers (Ratibida pinnata) had faded to simply gray heads, but this one was still going strong:
Hairy White Oldfield Aster
The temperature had dropped some, rain was coming in. Everything was delicious.
Common Comfrey
Wild carrot seed heads, here and above.
That encounter with native plants of Wisconsin pretty much filled my Nature cup. When I came home, just as at Pearl’s, this first morning I wandered around and around again to see how my own garden had fared in my absence. In spite of all the unfinished projects waiting for me, I felt warmly welcomed. It’s been a little rainy, and cloudy. For some reason my furnace is not turning on, so I gave in and just opened the door to the coolness, and put on a flannel shirt.
I guess the Japanese anemones heard me saying that I plan to move them to a different spot, and they are putting on a display five times bigger than ever in their ten years of life. I’ll have to reconsider… If nothing else, I will at least wait until they finish blooming before I move them. Other things blooming now are bulbine….
The salvia is producing more blooms since I rather tardily trimmed the old ones.
And always, always, the pomegranate bushes are blooming, from spring until frost! Rosemary is flowering right now, too.
I’m finding it quieting to my spirit to be among the plants as they adjust to the changes of fall. I thought the urgency and too-muchness I was feeling leading up to my time away would be waiting for me when I got home, but it seems not.
This humble native succulent is quietly waiting, not demanding more than a few drops of water from time to time. It appreciates a little shade. When I bought it, there was a sign nearby saying it was not ready for transplanting yet. So it was just the plant for me. We will be ready when we’re ready!
In Wisconsin my daughter Pearl has been tending a large house and garden for about eight years. She’s much more artistic and organized than I, about all of the design and execution of beautiful spaces indoors and out. She does all the work herself, even to the point of laying bricks to create a quiet and somewhat hidden corner to sit in, with morning sun and afternoon shade. It’s a wonderful spot winter or summer, and I enjoyed it with Pearl on one of my visits. This time, she had little time for sitting, what with being the wedding planner for Maggie. While she was bustling about, on my first morning after arriving late at night, I made the rounds to see all the flowers that are still blooming everywhere.
Gladsome Lights 