~

Four Miles North of Springside

Posted on by stephen t berg / 17 Comments

 

Every year around this time I call the farm.
I listen to the muted ring of the rotary phone, and wait.
Mom says, “Hello?” Her voice, careful at first, then,
“Oh Stephen, I was just thinking of you.”

The low January sun is bouncing off the drifts into the kitchen.
Sunny Boy cereal is bubbling on the enamel hot plate.
Dad has stepped out of the porch into the snow
and is using the steel grain shovel to clear a path to the tractor shed.
The line crackles and mom says, “Will you be coming home
in the spring?”

The drifts are high from last night’s wind.
But now there’s a vast great plains calm.
It’s cold and there’s a reverence of hoarfrost on the grey poles,
and the drooping lines, and the green glass insulators;
and chimes of snow crystals hang in the blue refulgent air.

With braille eyes I reach through the receiver to touch
mom’s face. Her eyes are lakes of kindness. And I say,
“Seeding time — I’ll try to be home by then.”

Now the voice goes quiet and I listen to the hum of the line,
which really isn’t there — nor the telephone,
no longer the house, or the shed, or the prairie farm.

 

Happy New Year!

Grow Mercy’s Evolving List of Gentle Propositions

Posted on by stephen t berg / 20 Comments

 

– To pray for the peace of all peoples,
will add a grain of hope to this flickering new year;

– a contented soul is paradise;

– heaven, if we have the eyes for it, is us, in our unfolding inclusiveness;

– the Big Bang is God’s dancing body; the shimmering fallout is yours;

– is not miracle still the best word to describe how we got here? and our stories? each one, surrounded by suspense and mystery;

– a flash of insight can sky-rocket your life, but don’t go making a religion;

– you want meaning? behold the earth, love her array of inhabitants;

– the heart is a spotted peach — there’s no getting through without some bruising;

– a glib apology creates another wound — a word of mercy is healing;

– friendship is full-bodied wine, a fine acquaintance is the bubbly kind;

– pavement, like a hard heart, longs to be pierced by grass;

– we are lonely pilgrims, prodigals returning, ready now to receive the love that’s waiting;

– since we receive our selves through the eyes of others, let us go tenderly;

– the crushed grapes of letting go, can be Beaujolais for the soul;

– good art enlarges our lives, and challenges autocrats;

– a side dish of skepticism is good for you, but a main course is constipating;

– truth languishes in the theatres of politics, flourishes in the cries of children;

– God is haiku, Jesus is free verse;

– snowflakes are the angels of leaves;

– do not shush chrysanthemums;

– don’t drag with you what’s dead — everything you need you’ll find along the way;

– don’t vomit outright — let the poison pass through and teach you, what to hate, what to tolerate;

– despite the crazed magnificence of our vanities, our true longing is to be each other’s joy;

– everyday, set your cherished certainties on the sill of an open window — discard what doesn’t fly, what does will return;

– theology says I come from the heavens, poetry says I come from a farm, four miles north of Springside;

– rest your head on your easel, it will open a door.

– intelligence is a window, fame is tinsel, kindness is a temple;

– gender is both river and riverbed, and as enigmatic;

– the twin sister of praise is grief;

– don’t scold yourself, worry is a form of prayer;

– flawless diamonds do not sparkle;

– approach an orchid on your knees,
lift your eyes to the dawn,
listen with the ear of your heart, and
love will find you in the grief-fractured layers of your life;

– when we meet, I’m fine with a hug, if you are.

Wishing you a bright and beautiful New Year!

 

~

Christmas in Ladysmith

Posted on by stephen t berg / 20 Comments
Photo: Ladysmith Chronicle

 

Because we followed an evening star,
here, to our new slimmed-down home
among the stolid mountains,
the high jewel lakes, the anxious highway,
the lordly logging trucks,
the life-giving waterfalls of Holland Creek,
the pushy mufflers of Ford 150s,
parked by the shining shops on First,
the lineup at the cinnamon-bun bakery,
gluten-free at Wild Poppy,
the slick black canopy of Salamander Books,
nests of knick-knacks at the general store,
and the old Temperance Hotel, now a gallery
with framed impressions of the Salish Sea;
on to Transfer Beach, its gritty history,
and a constellation of boats,
their masts and sails defined by strings of lights —
the way Christmas puts all things in high relief —
then back to the levitating suburbs,
light the gas fireplace, ease the yearly hollowness
with mulled wine — bury some worries
of the temporary kind.

This year, family-absent, we’ll celebrate
with local friends, share the family stories,
our speckled histories.
We’ll chatter up the joys, modulate the sorrows —
loving reunions, unsolvable divisions —
all that’s real and never far from pain or laughter.
And I’ll prattle on about last-years perfect Christmas,
then recall the one before,
I saw my partner weeping.

 

Ecology/Nature

Walking in Wildwood

Posted on by stephen t berg / 16 Comments
Dr. Nancy Turner, Ethnobotanist, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies, UVic, Canada

 

My new volunteer position as caretaker of the Wildwood Ecoforest property, afforded me the pleasure of going for a hike through 80-plus acres of old-growth forest (plus 21 acres they are raising money to purchase), with several of the Wildwood Ecoforest (EIS) board members, two of whom were our guides. Barry Gates (red jacket), a conservationist, planner, and forest manager, with a wellspring of forest knowledge. And Nancy Turner (our photographer), who you’ll meet here:

Walking in Wildwood

– for Nancy Turner

O, sweet, spontaneous earth.  -e.e. cummings

This heart of a child,
disguised as an elderly woman with bad knees,
is delighted in everything at hand.

We are walking the old woods of Wildwood.
She tells us about palm tree moss, then the vanilla leaf,
then the licorice fern, then the cascara tree, “Their bark
is a fine tonic and laxative, so the Coastal peoples teach.”

I will not remember details, but I’ll remember her pleasure
in the green of step moss, her wonder at the single leaf left
on the blackcap raspberry, her smile at the ironic shrub,
called ocean spray, “highly prized for making arrow shafts.”

She delights in finding what she already knows is there.
Her joy in naming, still more joy in showing — stooping, she picks
a shiny rippled leaf, says, “rattlesnake plantain orchid,”
and begins to rub the leaf between her thumb and index finger,
“See these uncanny leaves? they separate;
indigenous children made tiny balloons of them.”

Her joy is of a genus I’ve met before — a devotion rooted
in mindful attention to the embroidery of creation; a threshold love
I’d once met in the heart of a monk: first, seed for his chickadees,
then tea in his hermitage. A successful day.

Hang on to this, I tell myself. Witness, this breathing adoration
that must have been, had to be, in all our beginnings,
a natural resident.

We stand on an escarpment looking over an acre of wetland
in this old-growth forest, and I think: if I could be unthinking
enough, unpossessed enough, I could hear the wet grass speak,
the liverworts laugh, the fir-crowns cry, glory!

I do not know her beliefs, it does not matter,
her way is to be in league with the spirits of leaves
present to the divine presence of trees,
the numinous lichen.

The day after our hike Nancy sent us this list of what we’d seen, and didn’t see, but what she knew was there.

Licorice fern on a broadleaf maple