Author: Tara Smith

I over think everything, and so it was with a poem to choose for Poetry Friday, which also happened to be the first day of a brand new year. Over breakfast this morning (already a day late, not a good omen for a new year), the much thumbed through poetry anthology I thought to leaf through fell open to this poem:

Love After Love By Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

And there it was: the perfect poem. When I first read this poem, these lines thrummed over and over:

“Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life whom you ignored
for another…”

They spoke of that journey we make towards understanding ourselves, and how hard it is to learn to trust our own intuitive wisdom, buried beneath layers of expectations, norms, conformity, self-doubt, mistrust. They spoke, directly, to me. And, I think, it’s just the right one with which to begin a new year.

We awakened this Christmas morning to find that waist high snow banks and pastures had vanished with the night’s Spring-like temperatures and heavy rain. The children are all home and under our roof again, and although we are ever conscious of the larger world and all that remains perilous and uncertain in the new year ahead, it’s been joyous to be together.

For a brief time, here in the middle of nowhere, we are content to make of the most of this holiday week, each moment feeling like “a downpour of gifts”.

Hold Out Your Hand by Julia Fehrenbacher

Let’s forget the world for a while
fall back and back
into the hush and holy
of now

are you listening? This breath
invites you
to write the first word
of your new story

your new story begins with this:
You matter

you are needed—empty
and naked
willing to say yes
and yes and yes

Do you see
the sun shines, day after day
whether you have faith
or not
the sparrows continue
to sing their song
even when you forget to sing
yours

stop asking: Am I good enough?
Ask only
Am I showing up
with love?

Life is not a straight line
it’s a downpour of gifts, please—
hold out your hand

Christmas is just around the corner, and I am feeling a sense of impending joy and sustaining hope which this season invariably makes me attuned to and grateful for. Which is really odd, because I am not a Christian…I am not of any faith I believe in, really.

I married a man, however, who believed. And this man loved music and sang beautifully. Eventually, we were gifted with three children who inherited both qualities; Christmas for our family centered around our church choir. And what a church and choir it was!

We had a formidable music director – formidable for her musical gifts, her demeanor, her ability to make everyone rise to her high standards and expectations. Under her, my musical family flourished, so much so that no one expected anything of me, which was just as well since I have no musical skill to speak of. So the Christmas season, from the herald of Advent, to the joyous celebration of Christmas Eve, was one of listening to the music my family practiced and then presented at church.

I found the music of Christmas, the hymns that is, powerful. And I found the story of Christmas itself redemptive and healing. Who among us has not been moved by the way children redeem us, heal us, make us hope? This story, as I listened to it year after year, watching my family in their various robes of black, blue, green, and red, brought the story to life through melodious hymn after hymn, grew on me as an allegory of redemption and hope. The service of lessons and carols, in particular, was the one that spoke to the deepest reaches of my soul.

As a survivor of child abuse and sexual abuse, I see the world through a particular filter: there is very little to truly have faith in, and children know the way to truth. The story of Christmas is, to me, a story of a child showing the way to truth, as children ever do. So, come Christmas season, the music that calls me is the Service of Lessons and Carols, preferably sung by the combined choirs of West Side, or, since I am far removed from that these days, the choir of King’s College, Cambridge (via YouTube):

My favorite is the 1997 service, which begins with this invitation to its theme: “…love came down at Christmas, love shown to the unlovely that they might be lovely, love that calls us to a common love and to unite our hearts and voices in love and in love’s praise.”

Christmas, to my heathen soul, is a celebration of love – through music, through words.

Forecasts can be wrong, so we went to bed on Wednesday night expecting some snow on Thursday. Being an insomniac, I was up often that night, and I could see that our blasé attitude was going to be proven wrong: it was snowing hard.

By morning, the snow was deep…31 inches, and still snowing. Winter in the North Country. I had seen photographs of my husband and his family in the upstate New York winters of the ’60’s and ’70’s; the enormous snowbanks of Scott’s youth seemed a thing of the past, as I had never seen anything like it in my as yet short tenure at the farm. But…here it was again.

The last few days were all about clearing pathways to the barn, the pole barns, anywhere where access was vital. The town snow plow broke down a fourth of the way up our hill, and our driveway remained untouched for two days. Hardly anything seemed to be moving at all, even the skies were silent.

There was something healing about that silence, about the intense but quiet physical work just to enable daily life, and the satisfied exhaustion which followed. It’s been such a noisy year – full of distractions, anxiety, stress. For a brief moment in time, here on this remote farm, I felt completely at peace, these lines of poetry echoing a quiet beat:

“In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.”

Every bit of the snow that fell two days ago has now evaporated back into the sky. So, it appears, was the lift in my general mood. As I was mucking out the barn this morning, I had dark thoughts: a return to soggy, stinky mud here, there, and everywhere. I would not let even the blue skies I could see from the barn windows cheer me up.

Then, as I made my way to the compost pile with buckets of muck, I caught sight of Bowie, deep into her morning nap. She looked perfectly content with what the day had given her: a warm breakfast, a good run around the pasture’s perimeter to check for its safety, a fair amount of affection. Who knows what the rest of the day would bring…at the moment, who cared?!

Further along, I could see that the sheep had re-discovered a patch of the pasture they could spend the day grazing over and resting. They seemed nonplussed about having to trade their winter “office” – a rocky ledge at the highest point of the pasture.

I, alone, was the Grinch who had come to steal the farm’s good cheer.

Thinking about this led me to (eventually) remember this poem, which is from this gem of a collection I clearly need to spend time re-reading:

Prescription for the Disillusioned by Rebecca del Rio

Come new to this day.
Remove the rigid overcoat of experience,
the notion of knowing,
the beliefs that cloud your vision.

Leave behind the stories of your life.
Spit out the sour taste of unmet expectation.
Let the stale scent of what-ifs waft back into the swamp
of your useless fears.

Arrive curious, without the armor of certainty,
the plans and planned results of the life you’ve imagined.
Live the life that chooses you,
new every breath, every blink of your astonished eyes.

I’ve been pining for snow all of November. Rain and weirdly warm temperatures had turned the pasture into a muddy, smelly mess, and grey skies day after day was dispiriting, to say the least. Yesterday morning began with a gentle snowfall, which delighted me to no end.

Snow swept up the valley and down from the Green Mountains all day, and by evening we had several inches of snow: soft, fluffy snow that was somehow so comforting. Snow makes some farm chores more difficult: the outdoor water sources have to be drained, and getting buckets up to the flock can be challenging, to say the least. But, all in all, lovely and clean snow blanketing the filthy pastures and hardening up the muck and mud, makes the extra work worthwhile: it makes for heart-stopping scenery while I work.

The flock came in as evening snow was picking up, they were happy to be in for the night. I went about the chore of shutting some gates and opening others, and then rested for a long while, taking in the magic on the big barn on a winter night:

Bowie was off barking in the distance, warding off some unknown threat. I could hear the sheep moving around in the barn, feasting on their evening hay. My cloak of gloom lifted, and was carried away in a swirl of snowflakes and winter air.

Don’t Hesitate by Mary Oliver

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

It’s been a grey and gloomy end to November and beginning of December. Rain and warm temperatures has made the pastures muddy, soggy, and somewhat smelly. November’s election delivered the new administration I’d hoped for, but the current one continues to wreck havoc. Covid is everywhere again, thanks to our nation’s inability to take it seriously and behave responsibly. It’s hard to find joy these days…

But then, Nature finds a way to solace. We had a full moon, even though the sky was cloud filled. Sitting by the big barn, the flock all in for the night and Bowie finishing up her final perimeter check, I watched the moon dance through silver clouds. Owls hooted here and there, as late night settled on our valley; settled over me.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring; new reasons to worry and rage, no doubt. But this night’s sky gave reason for joy, and I’m glad I paid notice.

“And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old—or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.”
― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs

Today is Sophie’s last day on this good, green earth. She has given us many years of all that makes dogs such blessed companions: unswerving loyalty, unbounded affection, reasons to smile in the midst of deep gloom. At sixteen, she can barely see and seldom hear. She has pretty much stopped eating. Although there are flashes of her old love of walking through woods and the pastures on our farm, she is mostly exhausted and in need of sleep. Acupuncture treatments have lost their efficacy, and I’ve had to have that difficult discussion with the vet and family: what is the responsible and loving thing to do?

Sophie had been rescued from a kill shelter in West Virginia and brought to New Jersey. We had adopted a Katrina dog before her, and nursed Sam back to good health, only to discover that his owner (who had been searching for his beloved dog ever since the hurricane had passed over New Orleans) wanted him back. Some months after that heartbreak, the shelter called to tell us that there was another rescue dog that we could love just as much: Sophie. They were right. And we have, these last fourteen years.

Suburban New Jersey was tolerable for Sophie, but she came into her own as a farm dog these last five years. Free of a leash, she has roamed far and wide, inspecting every inch and reveling in every view. She, too, found her piece of heaven, and that was a gift to us.

It is hard to say goodbye to those we love. Still harder, though, is to see them suffer. But there will be green fields where Sophie goes, and many sticks to be able to chase again…and we must draw some small comfort in that, some how…

“I had a dog
who loved flowers.
Briskly she went
through the fields,

yet paused
for the honeysuckle
or the rose,
her dark head

and her wet nose
touching
the face
of every one

with its petals
of silk,
with its fragrance
rising

into the air
where the bees,
their bodies
heavy with pollen,

hovered—
and easily
she adored
every blossom,

not in the serious,
careful way
that we choose
this blossom or that blossom—

the way we praise or don’t praise—
the way we love
or don’t love—
but the way

we long to be—
that happy
in the heaven of earth—
that wild, that loving.”
― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs

So many conversations this past week have coalesced around the question of Thanksgiving: is your family coming? will you be alone? how weird is this pandemic Thanksgiving? how are you coping?

Yes…it’s weird.

My kids travel up from Brooklyn. One is here already, after having being tested. But, Covid has spiked again in New York City, and getting tested has become tricky to well nigh impossible. So, the other two may or may not make it up. We’ve never spent Thanksgiving apart, through the college years and the ongoing partnering up years. Not to have my children home for Thanksgiving is the unthinkable, but 2020 is the year of exactly that.

Walking through the pasture on Friday morning, I felt burdened by concerns: for our little family, for the Trumpian America, for the planet, for the… what does one think about when the world seems to be falling apart? What is worthy of considered thought?

Later that day, we were gifted with an extraordinary sunset. In the quiet of the moment, in the beauty and grace that is this farm I am lucky enough to live on, I thought to give praise and find joy. Both are fleeting, both are unexpected, and both come when least expected.

Praise What Comes by Jeanne Lohmann

Surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven’t deserved
of days and solitude, your body’s immoderate good health
that lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praise
talk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, books
that are your food and your hunger; nightfall and walks
before sleep. Praising these for practice, perhaps
you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs
you never intended. At the end there may be no answers
and only a few very simple questions: did I love,
finish my task in the world? Learn at least one
of the many names of God? At the intersections,
the boundaries where one life began and another
ended, the jumping-off places between fear and
possibility, at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?