Poem: Blackberry-Picking

for Philip Hobsbaum

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

                            Seamus Heaney

 

 

 

 

 

Sounds of silence

There is a wonderful stillness here. Especially I love the evenings, when I linger on my verandah and revel in the complete absence of all sound. That is strange, you will say; how can one enjoy sound that is absent, or indeed anything that does not exist! But if you were a musician perhaps you too would be permitted to hear, in the night stillness a sound, as though the earth in its flight through space intoned a deep bass note. 

Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky,
To My Best Friend: Correspondence Between Tchaikovsky and Nadezhda von Meck 

 

 

 

Preference

To know what you prefer,
    instead of humbly saying Amen
        to what the world tells you you ought to prefer,
            is to have kept your soul alive.

                         Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Uplifted

The effort to understand the universe
    is one of the very few things
        which lifts human life a little above the level of farce
            and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

                    Steve Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory

 

 

 

 

Metaphysical outlaws

If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full of metaphysical outlaws.

Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

 

 

 

 

Great inventions

The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization.

        John Banville, Paris Review interview

 

 

 

 

An appreciation

The Biblical words about the genesis of heaven and earth are not words of information but words of appreciation. The story of creation is not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being. 

Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Wisdom of Heschel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Poem: How Many, How Much

How many slams in an old screen door?
    Depends how loud you shut it.
How many slices in a bread?
    Depends how thin you cut it.
How much good inside a day?
    Depends how good you live 'em.
How much love inside a friend?
     Depends how much you give 'em.

            Shel Silverstein 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making it up as you go along

Even non-human animals mostly follow the instincts and behaviours that characterize their species, Sarte believed. But as a human being, I have no predefined nature at all. I create that nature through what I choose to do. Of course I may be influenced by my biology, or by aspects of my culture and personal background, but none of this adds up to a complete blueprint for producing me. I am always one step ahead of myself, making myself up as I go along. 

Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café 

 

 

 

 

 

Eight million stories

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City.
    New York City is itself a detective story.

                Agatha Christie, Life magazine 1956

 

 

 

 

 

Redemption now

Past and future exist only in our memory.
The present moment, though, is outside of time, it’s Eternity.
In India, they use the word ‘karma,’ for lack of any better term.
It isn’t what you did in the past that will affect the present.
It’s what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.

Paulo Coelho, Aleph

 

 

 

 

 

 

Returning

In a few hours one could cover that incalculable distance;
from the winter country and homely neighbours,
to the city where the air trembled like a tuning-fork
with unimaginable possibilities.

        Willa Cather, Lucy Gayheart

 

 

 

One day at a time

One made a climate; one made the days —
    the complexion, the special flavor,
        the special happiness of every day as it passed;
            one made life.

                    Willa Cather, Shadows on the Rock

 

 

 

 

 

Benediction

Go forth into the world in peace.
Be strong, and of good courage.
Hold fast to that which is good;
Render to no one evil for evil.
Strengthen the faint-hearted;
Support the weak.
Help the afflicted;
Show love to everyone.
Love and serve the Lord,
Rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit;
And the blessing of almighty God,
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,
Be among you and remain with you always.  Amen

Book of Common Prayer

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: So This Is Nebraska

The gravel road rides with a slow gallop
over the fields, the telephone lines
streaming behind, its billow of dust
full of the sparks of the redwing blackbirds.

On either side, those dear old ladies,
the loosening barns, their little windows
dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs
hide broken tractors under their skirts.

So this is Nebraska. A Sunday
afternoon; July. Driving along
with your hand out squeezing the air,
a meadowlark waiting at every post.

Behind a shelterbelt of cedars,
top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees,
a pickup kicks its fenders off
and settles back to read the clouds.

You feel like that; you feel like letting
your tires go flat, like letting the mice
build a nest in your muffler, like being
no more than a truck in weeds,

clucking with chickens or sticky with honey
or holding a skinny old man in your lap
while he watches the road, waiting
for someone to wave to. You feel like

waving. You feel like stopping the car
and dancing around on the road. You wave
instead and leave your hand out gliding
larklike over the wheat, over the houses.

                     Ted Kooser

 

 

 

 

 

On first viewing the Great Plains

Whenever money and the weather allowed, I would cross the mountains and drive around on the plains. A friend came to visit in the spring, and the first thing I did was take her there. My friend is from the West Indies; she had never seen the American West, except for California. We followed U.S. Highway 2 to Glacier National Park, and then we went up the Going-to-the-Sun Highway, past the standing dead trees burned in the lightning fire of 1967, through tunnels in the rock, past precipitous drops on the passenger side, past cliffs dripping water, past old snowdrifts with graffiti scratched on them, past our own chilled breath blowing out the car windows, past mountains with white, sharp tops, and then across Logan Pass, on the Continental Divide. I kept telling my friend I wanted her to see the Great Plains. The road began to descend, and at the turn of each switchback another mountain range would disappear, like scenery withdrawn into the wings, while the sky that replaced it grew larger and larger. We left the park and turned onto U.S. Highway 89. A driver coming down this road gets the most dramatic first glimpse of the Great Plains I’ve ever seen. For some miles, pine trees and foothills are all around; then, suddenly, there is nothing across the road but sky, and a sign says HILL TRUCKS GEAR DOWN, and you come over a little rise, and the horizon jumps a hundred miles away in an instant. My friend’s jaw—her whole face, really—fell, and she said, “I had no idea!”

Ian Frazier, Great Plains

 

24-7

 The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska
        was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska.

                        Willa Cather, My Antonia

 

 

 

Foreign lands

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land;
it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.

        G. K. Chesterton, The Riddle of the Ivy

 

 

 

Question everything

All things are to be examined and called into question.
There are no limits set to thought.

        Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way 

 

 

Just make it up

Marty, the future isn't written.
It can be changed. You know that.
Anyone can make their future whatever they want it to be.

    Doc Emmett Brown, (played by Christopher Lloyd)
    Back to the Future Part III, screenplay by Bob Gale

The essence of beauty

What is the essence of “beauty”? For me, it keeps coming back to art.
I’ve always defined art as man’s reaction to the work of God.
In God’s work there is beauty and we want to replicate that somehow.
Whether it’s the photographer or a painter that sees the work of light
on something and they try to capture that – the filmmaker with light;
the designer in the theater, trying to craft and carve with light.
You try to capture the essence of that beauty which, like art,
connects us eventually back to God.
The things that allow us to recognize humanity in the world,
and God in our self, take us to an emotional place:
that’s what beauty is. 

    Aldo Billingslea, actor and professor of theater arts,
    quoted in Signs of Life, by Rick Fabian

 

 

 

 

Poem: What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark

After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—

something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation
look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person

add up to something.

                Brad Aaron Modlin

 

 

 

 

 

Make an effort

Why is it that we remember with effort but forget without effort?
That we learn with effort but stay ignorant without effort?
That we are active with effort, and lazy without effort?

        Augustine of Hippo, City of God

 

 

 

 

 

The Devil's definition

REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher.

        Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Choose one

Buddha says there are two kinds of suffering:
    the kind that leads to more suffering and
    the kind that brings an end to suffering.

        Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

 

 

 

 

 

Happy endings

In the old movies, yes,
there always was the happy ending and order was restored.
As it is in Shakespeare's plays.
It's no disgrace to, in the end, restore order.
And punish the wicked and, in some way, reward the righteous.

        John Updike, Salon interview

 

 

 

 

 

Satisfaction

I have never killed any one,
but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.

        Clarence Darrow, The Story of My Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Spiritual Exercise

To get some distance from this, you first need to get some perspective.

Walk outside on a clear night and just look up into the sky.

You are sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

Though you can only see a few thousand stars, there are hundreds of billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy alone. In fact, it is estimated that there are over a trillion stars in the Spiral Galaxy. And that galaxy would look like one star to us, if we could even see it.

You’re just standing on one little ball of dirt and spinning around one of the stars.

From that perspective, do you really care what people think about your clothes or your car? Do you really need to feel embarrassed if you forget someone’s name?

How can you let these meaningless things cause pain? If you want out, if you want a decent life, you had better not devote your life to avoiding psychological pain. You had better not spend your life worrying about whether people like you or whether your car impresses people. What kind of life is that? It is a life of pain.

You may not think that you feel pain that often, but you really do. To spend your life avoiding pain means it’s always right behind you.

    Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Stepping Lightly

We walk on air every day,
the weight of our bodies
pressing our luck, pressing
through time and space,
one single chance
to stomp our heavy foot upon
tender green fragility, or
with our wings of diplomacy
spread wide, float along
the line of life we’re given,
crushing nothing in our path.

            Marilyn Peretti

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope for a rally

I haven’t gotten so that I’m much more of a person, a being than I am now. 

I haven’t gotten there. 

But what I have gotten was the opportunity, the knowledge, that there’s a way to do this, 

if only you had the guts or the inner resources to do it. 

If you were just tougher on yourself, 

if you were just more demanding, not so lazy, not so unconscious. 

But you can rally. 

The rallies are extraordinary. 

The rallies are great, and they give you hope, 

and it’s the hope for a rally that keeps me going. 

I really hope for a rally, all the time.


        Bill Murray, New York Times interview, April 2025