light lessons

i was slinking into the early-morning light of my garden, when i startled to the sound of a chainsaw. (a chainsaw in morning’s newly-born hours is, by any definition, a startling eruption.) i looked up and there was a man high in the limbs of the woodland grove that hugs the other side of the fence, the fence that now borders my quiet, contemplative, pretend-cloister garden. 

i swallowed my yelp, but let out a pipsqueak of question: “cutting down trees?” (my questions are so utterly incisive when chainsaws, at any hour, are involved.)

“only this one that’s in the way,” he replied as a tree as tall and willowy as our chimney came shimmying down. it was “in the way” of the soon-to-be hot tub that will gurgle and whir just the other side of said fence.

i swallowed back tears, and darted inside. 

i couldn’t bear to look at the now naked space, where once a gnarly old serviceberry had offered its limbs as occasional nursery and everyday waystation for the sparrows, and robins, and cheery wee chickadees that flock––season by season, hour by hour––to my feeders and fountains and free-for-all baths.

hours later, though, i needed distraction in the form of a hose. so i cranked the faucet and started my rounds. 

and that’s when i noticed: the light in that crook of my garden was suddenly dappled. and beautifully so. sunlight falling in splotches. and sprees. sunlight igniting the backsides of leaves. where once there’d been only monochrome of shadow, there now was shimmer and glint and translucence on flat plane of leaf and frill of each fern frond. the patch was a playlot for luminescence as never before. a landscape “tricked out in gilt,” is how annie dillard once wrote of the play of peekaboo light as it darted and dodged.

i almost swore i could hear the wide-mouthed leaves gulping down sunlight, a commodity they’d tasted far too little of over the long many years.

i stood there beholding. letting each molecule sink deep down within.

and i had to admit it was as lovely a light show as i’d seen since the one in the night sky the midnight before, when the great mama blue moon headlined the stage in her most zaftig dimensions. 

seems light is my gospel of the week. moonlight leading me home in the night. sunlight alive where it’s not fallen in decades. 

this whole holy earth, it seems, is straining to fill in my shadowy cracks with every last drop of all the light it can muster. 

and i, like my forget-me-not’s leaves, am guzzling it greedily down. 

after dousing myself in this splash of a light bath, this bit of earthly gospel from the center for spirituality in nature landed in my mailbox: more insight on light, the way the trees bend toward the light. botanically, biologically speaking, i mean. it’s the leaves that lead the way. specifically, the cells on the dark side of the leaves elongate and stretch toward the light, seeking photosynthesis, that alchemical wonder that stirs sunlight and water and carbon dioxide and somehow winds up with O2 and sugar, and moves the whole show along. the branches and twigs follow the lead of the leaves. so the tree actually bends, reaches toward light. and the question is asked: what would it mean to turn toward the light with all of our energy and substance and being? is their holy wisdom to drink in here?

it’s something to ponder, all right. so have a listen right here:

sometimes i think the folks in charge must have a check by name, letting them know i’m one of the ones who needs lessons in duplicate or triplicate. so when three times in 24 hours i’m struck by a lightbeam, i get the idea there’s something i’m supposed to be pondering. 

what light lessons have struck you lately? 

this beautiful poem, on how the world is saturated in prayer — voluntary and involuntary, spoken and sung, resounding and silent — is one i bumped into this week. it’s by carol ann duffy, one of the UK’s best-known poets, the first woman, and first openly LGBTQ+ person, to become poet laureate of the UK. it’s a poem with a bit of vernacular that might benefit from a few notes. so these, from my friends at SALT Project, a not-for-profit production company dedicated to visual storytelling and to my mind a humming hive of creativity:

(1) “Minims” are half-notes written on a page of musical notation. 

(2) BBC Radio has long broadcast the “Shipping Forecast” for the various seas around the British Isles, waters divided into 31 sea areas, including Rockall, Malin, Dogger, and Finisterre. These regular broadcasts, especially the ones late at night, are for many Britons a deeply familiar touchstone: the announcer’s voice methodically reciting the sea areas all around the islands, one by one, forecasting the weather. 

(3) And finally, “Finisterre” (pronounced “FIN-iss-tair,” rhymes with “BIN-kiss-fair”) literally means “end of the world”; the sea area’s name was recently changed to “FitztRoy,” but many Britons (such as the poet Duffy herself) grew up hearing the older name “Finisterre” repeatedly intoned on BBC Radio… 

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer —
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

  • Carol Ann Duffy

p.s. lots of chair birthdays in the days past: sharon b, jcv, my dear neighbor sarah who keeps us in sweets. and in the days ahead, my big brother john. happy blessed days to each and every one of you, and anyone else i might have happened to miss…