thanks giving

I'm reprising the Wendell Berry poem I've shared here before:


The Wild Geese


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.

mystic-lit

I'm blogging today at mystic-lit, so after you're done here, come on over there and say hello too.

two little bits of magic

Over the weekend I was out at the barn and found this tiny nest. The winds from the day before must have blown it down. I was immediately charmed by its size, but when I looked more closely I realized it has tail hairs from each of our horses woven into it.

Keil Bay's black with burnished brown, Salina's true black, Cody's chestnut, and Apache Moon's white. What treasure for our nature shelf.

Today I was raking leaves in the fog while the horses ate hay nearby. Our fields have trees and this time of year I try to keep up with the falling leaves as best I can so the winter grass will grow in.

Raking leaves is tiring work. It seems to particularly stress my right shoulder, so I alternate. I still manage to end up with a blister and an ache.

Even so, something about raking leaves has always appealed, and I figured out why today.

It's like when you clean up after a wonderful party. The left-behind glasses and plates remind you of who ate what and which conversation from the night before took place around that end of the table.

Raking leaves is like cleaning up after the the trees' fall fling. If you do it early, as the leaves fall, it's like raking color into piles. Painting with leaves.

And one's progress is so easily seen, the earth seems bare without its leaves, but today the bits of green meant forage for horses and also that it's rained.

dragons as princesses

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

-Rainer Marie Rilke


*******


I'm taking a wonderful workshop this fall that has to do with using fairy tales in psychotherapy and sandplay therapy. Yesterday we discussed the fairy tales we each selected at the beginning of the workshop - the one fairy tale that resonated with us at this point in our lives, or at any point.

My immediate thought was The Princess and the Pea. I discovered yesterday that my memory of the tale was very different than the actual tale. I had forgotten that the Prince was looking for a "real" princess, and that his mother, the Queen, had instituted the peas (not one, but three) beneath the stack of 20 mattresses and 20 feather beds as a test to find the true princess - the one sensitive enough to feel the peas.

I had forgotten that the real Princess shows up at the palace gate in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm, and that she is put to bed on top of the stack of mattresses and peas. When she awakens black and blue she is announced to be a Real Princess and marries the Prince.

Part of my work at hand is to discover the meaning of this fairy tale to me personally. Why did I immediately think of it when asked about a fairy tale?

I'm looking at the characters in the tale as aspects of my self. The Prince is the masculine energy and the princess feminine. The Queen mother is a sort of taskmaster and manipulator who devises tests and determines results.

I'm still working on it. I suspect the key has to do with the quest for something Real and the extreme sensitivity - how to transform that into power without turning black and blue in the process. The marriage would be the union of masculine and feminine into wholeness.

What is YOUR favorite fairy tale? Or the one that comes to mind first when you read this?

mystic-lit

Mystic-lit is a project I've been simmering for at least 6 months, and I'm really happy to announce that it's officially rolling as of this week, thanks in part to the energy and enthusiasm of a a very gifted writing colleague.

I'll be blogging on Wednesdays over there and I hope you'll take the time to come say hello. We've got a line-up of writers ready to talk craft and process and all things writerly.

Come join the conversation!