Our Fig Tree

 

Our son planted this fig tree close to 20 years ago. It was a tiny tree that has taken root and thrived. The past few years it’s been growing huge numbers of very large figs that are feeding our family, offering joy to parents, son, and now my son’s own children. It’s been a true blessing this summer and now on into fall, as we continue to pick the fruit and enjoy the time together as we share this harvest. 

The fig tree symbolizes strength, resilience, power, protection, and longevity. 

All these things have special meaning in our family right now and I’m so grateful to this beautiful tree for providing them for us. 

As I look at the photo, behind and to the left, I see a sunny clearing. I didn’t notice it as I took the photo, but in this moment I realize it’s Keil Bay’s gravesite, with Salina buried just past him. 

Of course Keil Bay and Salina were both strong personalities, loving friends to my family, powerful, protective, and long-lived in body and eternally in spirit. 

We are surrounded by this energy here on November Hill and I feel it every single day. 

Wild Geese, reprised

 It’s time - these two poems capture so much for me, and every autumn I read them again. 

The Wild Geese

Wendell Berry, 1934-

Horseback on Sunday morning,

harvest over, we taste persimmon

and wild grape, sharp sweet

of summer’s end. In time’s maze

over fall fields, we name names

that went west from here, names

that rest on graves. We open

a persimmon seed to find the tree

that stands in promise,

pale, in the seed’s marrow.

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear,

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye

clear. What we need is here.

Wild Geese

Mary Oliver, 1935-

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.