quiet in heart, and in eye clear

the wise eye of zen-master Keil Bay, with quiet-hearted Salina in the background.. a horseback ride in our back field, picking wild grapes from vines hung low, the persimmon tree down the lane, geese honking overhead, and this poem, which came to reside on my little altar last autumn when we moved here, and has this year come true:





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.

Wendell Berry

Time for the annual William Stafford (that lives on the inside of my laptop all year but is particularly apropos in this season):

Assurance

You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums,
or the silence after lightning before it says
its names - and then the clouds' wide-mouthed
apologies. You were aimed from birth:
you will never be alone. Rain
will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
long aisles - you never heard so deep a sound,
moss on rocks, and years. You turn your head
that's what the silence meant: you're not alone
The whole wide world pours down.

William Stafford

The view from the bench in the Writer's Garden at Weymouth, a favorite place to sit and ponder in between pages. I'm here for a few days to work on the novel-in-progress. Took a walk through the big field to the woods yesterday and there were the three ravens... they keep me focused. Back to the desk in the magic mansion.

For the past year or so, I've been hounded by ravens. Three at a time, usually, in various places in my life. They call outside my office window, fly beside my car on vacations, and sit in my fields here at home. Before we moved they used to pace outside our fence, taunting the Corgyn. The raven has a long history of being an omen, having to do with magic and shapeshifting, teaching how to bring light from darkness. The odd thing: my current novel in progress has to do with signs and omens, and there are ravens in it that predated these real ones, this conspiracy of ravens. I've tried to get photos but they fly away before I can snap the shutter. So here is the raven figure from my sandplay collection, the only one I can capture right now. I'll keep trying.

I'm working on a new photograph, but in the meantime, today is the autumn equinox, when we're halfway between midsummer and midwinter. A wonderful opportunity, in this harvest season, to meditate on light and darkness. Some ways to do this today: go outside and notice the sunlight and the shadow cast by your own body. Look at the pages you're working on and think about light and shadow in whatever way is meaningful to your story. Experience the sunset this evening, from light all the way to dark.

Consider this an invitation to share your thoughts on light and darkness.