Poetry

“Poetry is the language of the soul, expressing what would otherwise be inexpressible...helping us know things that would otherwise be unknowable. One of the surest signs God and I are talking is that it starts coming out in poetry!” Ruth Haley Barton

Fall Garden

In fall

the garden is spent

having given its all.

Cucumber vines lie exhausted on the ground

Tomato plants list to one side

Cornstalks stand dignified and empty

Sunflower faces droop earthward,

shades of their former selves.

All that has not been claimed lies moldering in the dirt—

a bruised tomato, a forsaken pepper…

a misshapen pumpkin, a trampled stalk of beans.

What came from the earth is returning

to the place from whence it came.

There is an intimacy here,

in the fall garden,

gazing at living things in their demise.

I want to avert my eyes, avoid this tender grief.

Is this life or is this death? I cannot tell.

Ah, but there is beauty here

amid all this death and dying.

To have given one’s self fully

at least once

that is the thing.

To have spent oneself in an explosion of color

to have offered one’s body for food,

one’s very soul for nourishment…

It is an unseemly generosity,

beauty of another kind.

In fall

the garden says, “This is my life, given for you.”

And we are fed.

©Ruth Haley Barton, 2012. Not to be used without permission.

ON TIME

There have to be times in your life when you move slow,

times when you walk rather than run, settling into each step…

There have to be times when you stop and gaze admiringly at loved ones,

marveling that they have been given to you for this life…

times when hugs linger and kisses are real,

when food and drink are savored with gratitude and humility

rather than gulped down on your way to something else.

There have to be times when you read for the sheer pleasure of if,

marveling at the beauty of words

and the endless creativity in putting them together…

times when you settle into the comforts of home and become human once again.

There have to be times when you light a candle and

find the tender place inside you that loves or sorrows or sings

and you pray from that place,

times when you let yourself feel, when you allow the tears to come,

rather than blinking them back because you don’t have time to cry.

There have to be times to sink into the soft body of yourself

and love what you love simply because love itself is a grace…

times when you sit with gratitude for the good gifts of your life

that get lost and forgotten in the rush of things…

times to celebrate and play

to roll down hills

to splash in water or make leaf piles

to spread paint on paper or walls or each other.

There have to be times to sit and wait for the fullness of God

that replenishes body, mind, and soul—

if you can even stand to be so full.

There has to be time

for the fullness of time

or time is meaningless.