"Joy" to the world

Let's start today's posting with a belated "Congratulations!" to one of my favorite poets, Joy Harjo, who, a few days ago, won the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award "to recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry." Here's a link to an interview she did shortly after the announcement. If you haven't yet enjoyed her writing, you're missing something wonderful. You wouldn't want to do that, would you? Now, speaking of wonderful things, yesterday there were at least four whitetails under the pear tree.

no partridge in it, 4 whitetails under a pear tree

Photo by J. Harrington

There's one hummingbird, perhaps more, still coming to the feeder. Haven't seen any orioles for several weeks or monarch butterflies for the past week or so. Field corn is drying out. Soy bean fields are yellowing. 

purple lovegrass developing seedheads

Photo by J. Harrington

Purple lovegrass (tumblegrass) seedheads swirl in cool breezes under a warm sun that plays hide-and-seek behind puffy cumulous clouds. Beef stew is in the dutch oven, fresh-baked sourdough bread is on the cooling rack. This year's apples harvest is showing up at the co-op. If it was up to me, the next six weeks or so could be put into a repeating loop for 9 or 10 months a the year.  There's a brief interlude as Summer winds down before the frenetic pace of harvest when the world just seems to mellow out. I believe we could all use more of that.

September Midnight

By Sara Teasdale 

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,

Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,

Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,

       Ceaseless, insistent.   

The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,

The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence

Under a moon waning and worn, broken,

       Tired with summer.   

Let me remember you, voices of little insects,

Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,

Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,

       Snow-hushed and heavy.   

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction,

While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest,

As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,

       Lest they forget them.

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