Nearer.

 Shishkin, In the Wild North, 1891

AT the END of the YEAR -- BLESSINGS

As this year draws to its end,

We give thanks for the gifts it brought

And how they became inlaid within

Where neither time nor tide can touch them.

The days when the veil lifted

And the soul could see delight;

When a quiver caressed the heart

In the sheer exuberance of being here.

Surprises that came awake

In forgotten corners of old fields

Where expectation seemed to have quenched.

The slow, brooding times

When all was awkward

And the wave in the mind

Pierced every sore with salt.

The darkened days that stopped

The confidence of the dawn.

Days when beloved faces shone brighter

With light from beyond themselves;

And from the granite of some secret sorrow

A stream of buried tears loosened.

We bless this year for all we learned,

For all we loved and lost

And for the quiet way it brought us

Nearer to our invisible destination.

John O’Donohue

Thanks, Ors.

Called.

Shishkin, Twilight, 1886

But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called—called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.

Jack London, from The Call of The Wild

Hear.

Shishkin, Mast-Tree Grove, 1898

Hear the voice of the Bard,

Who present, past, and future, sees;

            Whose ears have heard

            The Holy Word

That walked among the ancient trees;

      Calling the lapsed soul,

And weeping in the evening dew;

            That might control

            The starry pole,

And fallen, fallen light renew!

      O Earth, O Earth, return!

Arise from out the dewy grass!

            Night is worn,

            And the morn

Rises from the slumbrous mass.

      Turn away no more;

Why wilt thou turn away?

            The starry floor,

            The watery shore,

Is given thee till the break of day.

William Blake

On.

Shishkin, Stream in the Forest, 1870

The BROOK

I come from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,

Or slip between the ridges,

By twenty thorpes, a little town,

And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip’s farm I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles,

I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret

By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,

With here a blossom sailing,

And here and there a lusty trout,

And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake

Upon me, as I travel

With many a silvery waterbreak

Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel covers;

I move the sweet forget-me-nots

That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,

Among my skimming swallows;

I make the netted sunbeam dance

Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars

In brambly wildernesses;

I linger by my shingly bars;

I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Legend.

Shishkin, Birch Grove, 1871

Do you know the legend about cicadas? They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.

John Berger

Purity.

Shishkin, Pine Forest, 1872

The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless,
The circle of white ash widens around it.
I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time
I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller.
Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw;
The moon has come before them, the light
Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees.
It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish,
Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons;
The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall.
There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now.
There were sheep here after the farm, and fire
Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch,
The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil
Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat
And plate the surface like scales.
Twenty years ago the spreading gully
Toppled the big oak over onto the house.
Now there is nothing left but the foundations
Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge,
Six lonely, ominous fenceposts;
The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge
Over the deep waterless creek bed;
The hills are covered with wild oats
Dry and white by midsummer.
I walk in the random survivals of the orchard.
In a patch of moonlight a mole
Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein;
Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean;
Leo crouches under the zenith.
There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees.
The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible.
As the wind dies down their fragrance
Clusters around them like thick smoke.
All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight
They are silent and immaculate.

Kenneth Rexroth

Counsellors.

Shishkin, Woods in the Evening, 1869

Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference; as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
'This is no flattery; these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.'
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.

William Shakespeare, from As You Like It, Act II, Scene I

All.

Shishkin, Old Oak, 1866

ODES

1.
Of the gardens of Adonis, Lydia, I love
Most of all those fugitive roses
         That on the day they are born,
         That very day, must also die.
Eternal, for them, the light of day:
They're born when the sun is already high
         And die before Apollo's course

         Across the visible sky is run.
We too, of our lives, must make one day:
We never know, my Lydia, nor want
        To know of nights before or after
        The little while that we may last.
2.
To be great, be whole: nothing that's you
         Should you exaggerate or exclude.
In each thing, be all. Give all you are
         In the least you ever do.
The whole moon, because it rides so high,
         Is reflected in each pool.

Fernando Pessoa

Another.

Shishkin, The Forest of Countess Mordvinova, 1891

From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and here, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination found it easy to people with all manner of unfamiliar shapes, menacing, uncanny, or merely grotesque.

He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience needs not to be told what another world it all is - how even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The trees group themselves differently; they draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers, whispers that startle - ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange night birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes, or in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves - it may be the leap of a wood rat, it may be the footstep of a panther. What caused the breaking of that twig? What the low, alarmed twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds without a name, forms without substance, translations in space of objects which have not been seen to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to change its place. Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live!

Ambrose Bierce

More.

Shishkin, Cabin of a Wood, 1867

O dear little cabin, I've loved you so long,

And now I must bid you good-bye!

I've filled you with laughter, I've thrilled you with song,

And sometimes I've wished I could cry.

Your walls they have witnessed a weariful fight,

And rung to a won Waterloo:

But oh, in my triumph I'm dreary to-night --

Good-bye, little cabin, to you!

Your roof is bewhiskered, your floor is a-slant,

Your walls seem to sag and to swing;

I'm trying to find just your faults, but I can't --

You poor, tired, heart-broken old thing!

I've seen when you've been the best friend that I had,

Your light like a gem on the snow;

You're sort of a part of me -- Gee! but I'm sad;

I hate, little cabin, to go.

Below your cracked window red raspberries climb;

A hornet's nest hangs from a beam;

Your rafters are scribbled with adage and rhyme,

And dimmed with tobacco and dream.

"Each day has its laugh", and "Don't worry, just work".

Such mottoes reproachfully shine.

Old calendars dangle -- what memories lurk

About you, dear cabin of mine!

I hear the world-call and the clang of the fight;

I hear the hoarse cry of my kind;

Yet well do I know, as I quit you to-night,

It's Youth that I'm leaving behind.

And often I'll think of you, empty and black,

Moose antlers nailed over your door:

Oh, if I should perish my ghost will come back

To dwell in you, cabin, once more!

How cold, still and lonely, how weary you seem!

A last wistful look and I'll go.

Oh, will you remember the lad with his dream!

The lad that you comforted so.

The shadows enfold you, it's drawing to-night;

The evening star needles the sky:

And huh! but it's stinging and stabbing my sight --
God bless you, old cabin, good-bye!

Robert W. Service

Give.

Shishkin, Twilight, 1883

Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale helatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin-flowers. And the frisky ones – inkberry, lamb’s-quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones – rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms.

Mary Oliver

Turn'd.

Shishkin, Way in Rye, 1866

GARDEN OF LOVE

I went to the Garden of Love, 

And saw what I never had seen: 

A Chapel was built in the midst, 

Where I used to play on the green. 

And the gates of this Chapel were shut, 

And Thou shalt not. writ over the door; 

So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, 

That so many sweet flowers bore. 

And I saw it was filled with graves, 

And tomb-stones where flowers should be: 

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

William Blake

Flees.

Shishkin, Dark Forest, 1890

Ah vastness of pines, murmur of waves breaking,
slow play of lights, solitary bell,
twilight falling in your eyes, toy doll,
earth-shell, in whom the earth sings!

In you the rivers sing and my soul flees in them
as you desire, and you send it where you will.
Aim my road on your bow of hope
and in a frenzy I will flee my flock of arrows.

On all sides I see your waist of fog,
and your silence hunts down my afflicted hours;
my kisses anchor, and my moist desire nests
in your arms of transparent stone.

Ah your mysterious voice that love tolls and darkens
in the resonant and dying evening!
Thus in the deep hours I have seen, over the fields,
the ears of wheat tolling in the mouth of the wind

Pablo Neruda