As We Move Into Summer Days, We Offer You Poems and Writings by the Rev

As we move into summer days, we offer you poems and writings by the Rev. Sara Irwin and Sandy Stott and watercolors by the Rev. Judith Freeman Clark. Together these three gifted artists of word and image inspired and nourished us this spring with a poetry reading and art exhibit here at Bethany in May.

In the coming months, may you enjoy Sabbath and refreshment --days of wonder and creativity; days of return and surprise for noticing what matters, the beauty around you and your gifts for this world.

Big Poppy, by Judith Freeman Clark, Episcopal priest and artist

At the end of the day
by The Rev. Sara Irwin

Is there a parent
Or a lover
Who does not stop to check
that everyone is breathing

Sense the gift
of chests rising and falling
softly and unaware
unknowingly thankful
someone is watching

After the dinner dishes are done
After the school lunches are made
The coffee pot is set

What if I could see
the generosity in place of the scarcity
the nourishment in place of the hunger

Then pause to wonder
if it actually is all holy—
what could the things be
that would be beneath us?

What would be unworthy
of your own breath?

Sara Irwin is an Episcopal Priest, serving as rector at Christ Church, Waltham. You can find more of Sara's writing on her blog: www.saraiwrites.blogspot.com

Getting There - By the Big Branch River after Ten Days of Walking
by Sandy Stott

For days I have felt driven, pushed along by the demands of making headway, by pacing and its habits, by the measures of mileage, by the way time’s wire hums inside me. The sun’s warm hand and the river’s steady voice unstring that wire; I look up into a still, cloudless sky and drift off.

Whatever the length of sleep, it has been dreamless, and I awake in an eddy of the day, pressing easily up against its flow, languid as a leaf in its river. A milkweed seed drifts by, its tiny brown heart suspended beneath a wisp of white filaments. I sit up, drop my feet back into the river and watch the six-legged struggle of an ant adrift. By the time I get him onto a rescue leaf, he’s been twice around the eddy before me. How far upstream did he fall in? Perhaps he’s beyond his home range; perhaps as he scurries up the rock and out of sight, he’s heading into terra incognita or terra-not-so-friendly; perhaps he’s only yards from home. Well he’s gone, but now I’m looking into the water and thinking that I should go in. The pool’s deep enough, and surely I’m grubby enough to need it. But mainly I want the countershock of cold against the still-summery sun; mainly I want a new immersion.

Off with the shorts. Old guy baptism coming up; pale critter about to submerge. And then I recall Henry Thoreau’s command: “Invert your head,” he said in pursuit of new perspectives. Well, I know how to do that, and, hands firmly on stone, I bend my head so that my hair kisses the water first. Then I press my head down until the waterline is just below my eyebrows. The water is now my sky, the sky my water: skywater skywater! From the bank, I must look like a curious human question mark. White bottom to the sun: moonsun, moonsun! Then I tumble forward and in.
Later, while drying in the sun, I can see evaporation rising in tendrils from the peak of my knee; in the slight breeze that mimics the river, the “steam” flows downwind like a snow-plume from an alpine summit. A leaf drifts down, settles on my stomach; I leave it there. Once every few winters, when a sub-zero cold front rips through the Whites, a plume blows from the crest of Mt. Washington, marking it as cousin to the world’s big mountains. Summerwinter.

Note: This excerpt is from a longer piece - working title, Walking Distance - about a walk taken as part of a sabbatical from the school where I work.

Just August
by Sandy Stott

While we slept summer’s long
month pulled stakes folded
flaps, decamped, its easy show

over, its buttery light a thumbprint
on page 328, its blueberry stains
set for a winter of washes.
The old ocean rose and fell on its own
and in the morning we bumped

from window to window with a mos-
quito’s insistence on the present
as if hovering closely could sway

the way August sends
its drowsy bees next
from the grass-flattened fairgrounds
to the nodding fields
of goldenrod.

Sandy Stott serves on the faculty of Concord Academy. To read more about Sandy and his writings, please visit The Roost, a blog edited and written by Sandy for Thoreau Farm: http://thoreaufarm.org/theroost/

Patience I, by Judith Freeman Clark

To see more works by the artist, The Rev. Judith Freeman Clark visit her website: www.judithfreemanclark.net