Thoughts: Making our own rainbows

Yesterday morning early my son and I went for short hike along the Appalachian Trail. It was a bright, clear morning. My son brought along a spray bottle of water, something I had bought him for a school project and as we hit spots of sunlight, he sprayed a fine mist into the air, and discovered it made a rainbow.

I snapped a few shots of him creating rainbows and afterwords, when we looked at the pictures, he said "You got my fake rainbow!"

"But it wasn't a fake rainbow" I told him. "It was real. You just didn't wait for the rain to create it. You created your own rainbow." Which brought on a conversation about how we make our own beauty in life. Just another one of life's teaching opportunities.

But it's very true, and such an important lesson for him, and all of us to learn. I know I have gone through periods when I thought my happiness depended on circumstances, or others, but that's not the case. We create our own sense of peace, happiness or sadness more often than not.

We're not alone in the creation of course. God is by our side, watching to see what we will make of the life he's given us, and will help us. In fact, it's my experience (and it was not an easy set of lessons to learn, trust me.) that if we bring him into our lives with love and worship, he's far more likely to help us create a joyful life for ourselves. If we don't he leaves us to struggle on our own.

If we create a joyful life, a rainbow of a life, it's not fake. It's just as real as one made by perfect circumstances. And a lot more predictable!

Tom

Poem: A Stranger Smiling

A Stranger Smiling

You look up as you pass the clapboard church,
up at a warning sky, darkening with distant thunder,
a surprise so early in the spring. Your step quickens.

Your legs tire, reminding you that you are no longer young,
and each moment, even these at the cusp of the storm,
are more precious, that each bloom and blossom,

even each storm with it's fury and chaos,
is a gift, a moment to be carried close to the heart,
and shared.

So despite the wind that whips past you, you stop
and stare past the steeple, and pray thanks,
a stranger in the streets, smiling as the first raindrops fall.

==============

The picture is of the Mettowee Community Church, just down the street from my home in West Pawlet, VT. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Moving Day, part 2

As some readers know, I recently moved from Virginia to Vermont, and with it, moved my blog from the old Summit Manor blog, to this one, named after my small house in West Pawlet that sidles up to an abandoned slate quarry. (This post tells the tale more completely.)

I kept the old blog because I did not want to erase my old poetry and photographs, and because I had a lot of readers who came there, first, then here, or a few who came here, and then went there to read older poems.

Bumbling through Blogger help files, I found I could transfer all my old posts to here, so now this one has the older and newer poems. I will no longer be updating the Summit Manor blog at all.

Thanks to all you who read and comment and allow my words into your life. I appreciate you.

Tom

PS - The picture is from a walking trail that runs seven miles from Rupert, VT to West Pawlet, VT. Called the D&H trail, for the railroad that used to run this route, it goes practically behind my house and affords wonderful views of fields, mountains and wetlands in south west Vermont. You can click on the picture for a larger view.

Poem: Time

Time

Ageless as silence, this peace
bathed in shadows and the song
of water, spilling out of the earth
and falling over stones,

singing of lives past and present, all flowing
like time, liquid, one moment languid,
then in a torrent, not
of activity, but thought and emotion,

so powerful it can sweep you away,
or slowly erode the stone beneath your feet,
or revive you, like a May shower
after the heat of the day.

=======================

The picture was taken near Manchester, Vermont. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: An Hour Before Dusk

An Hour Before Dusk

Late in the day, you sit and gaze over the valley.
a light wind blows, bringing the sweet smell of lilacs.
Somewhere, finches sing.

Your feet are bare, and the afternoon sun brings sweat
even as your feel wallow in the grass
and find the cool black earth below.

The day has been full
of love, anger, disquiet, confusion and tenderness
but now it is time to cease,

to allow God the time to wreak peace in you,
despite the thunderstorms that echo
on the far side of the mountain.

The storm will sweep across the valley tonight.
It will not be denied, but for now, it is distant,
and you have the time to be, and you shut your eyes, remembering

that in faraway china, the dragon sings of vigor,
not destruction, and your imagine the roar of the storm as yours,
the dragon rising, strong, despite the stillness

or because of it.

=====================

The picture was taken in Rupert, Vermont. You can click on it for a larger version.

Poem: Still Life

Still Life

You pause and look at the table,
timeless light spilling over the rough wood,
casting tiny shadows, dark and still.

After years of flux, of constant change,
pain and growth, life has become still,
a pause, a time to take a deep breath

and simply be;
to let the heart grow still
and know once again, God,
to know once again, yourself,
to know once again, love.

=============

The picture was taken at the American Frontier Museum in Staunton, Va. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: The Moment Past Dawn

The Moment Past Dawn

The river is calm, early in the morning,
too early for the wind to ripple the waters.
It is the moment when the tide halts
and is neither incoming or flowing back to the sea,

a moment when suddenly, anything is possible
and you can row your small boat
anywhere, a moment
when the longest journey beckons

and fear evaporates like morning fog,
and you begin, singing, your own oars
creating the only ripple, catching the morning sun
as they reach out, to the shore, to the sea, to the horizon.

==============

The picture was taken at Mystic Seaport, CT. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: Standing on the Train Platfom at 9AM

Standing on the Train Platform at 9 AM

You stand on the platform, waiting, watching
as trains come, stop, go.
People, familiar strangers, embark
on their own journeys, and you wonder

if their path is a strange as yours.
You wonder
what chain of events take them
on their journey

and if they are sure of their destination,
or like you,
are waiting for a train
to places unknown.

==========================

The picture was taken at the train station in Munich, Germany. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: Ivy

Ivy

The tiny, tender tendrils grow
even here,
on the stone hard bricks,

in a place that would seem
to offer nothing,
no nourishment, soil or water,

only unyielding hardness,
and yet, the ivy grows,
nay, more than grows,

but flourishes and in time,
covers the brick wall like a blanket,
it's roots finding their way

deep into cracks unimagined,
like love's triumph
in the hardest heart.

=============

The picture was taken at Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson's "other" house in Forest, Va. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: The Schoolhouse

The Schoolhouse

You walk slowly past the schoolhouse late in the afternoon,
your eyes drinking in the glory it once was,
wondering how many who live in this town
learned their lessons in this white building
at the peak of the hill. How many

have memories of bright white paint
and laughter and pain, of teachers and books,
and you think of your own life lessons
and where they were learned,
how life, not a place, has been your most poignant classroom

and how the most unexpected souls, your most enduring teachers,
their memories still sharp in your heart,
which after all,
is where the truest lessons reside.

=================

The picture is of the schoolhouse in West Pawlet, VT, just up the street from my house. It is no longer an active school, but evidently, according to people I talk to, is slowly being restored by someone in New York who comes up on weekends and works. What an undertaking! You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: The Hole in the Wall

The Hole in the Wall

The carpenter is meticulous,
carefully cutting, layer by layer.
Plaster. Lathe. Studs.

Slowly opening up the wall
between the duplexes
to make the house whole

for the first time in six generations,
flooding each room with new light,
letting sound and bodies flow

letting lives, once separated,
join together
as one.

It is not an easy task.
There are obstacles that show themselves:
ancient wiring that must be moved,

odd framing that must be worked around.
fragile plaster that falls at a touch,
but slowly, each is overcome,

Today, the house feels like a wreck
with debris and dust strewn everywhere,
but even now, with the ruins of the work all about you,

with all that is unfinished,
you can see what will be,
and believe in the beauty of the future, seeing

in these two rooms conjoined, a reflection
of life, and love,
of hope and promise.

=============

The photograph is from my new home in West Pawlet, Vt., where this weekend my next door neighbor opened up two rooms for me, as well as opened up a stairwell. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: After

After

After the suffering,
there is another time,
a time that decides our eternity,
where we decide
to continue our own pain,
or swing like a child in spring,
laughing in joy
at the beauty of a May afternoon.

=============

The picture was taken of a yard down the road from me in West Pawlet, VT. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: Yard Work

Yard Work

You stand and stare,
overwhelmed at first by how much
there is to cut away,
how overgrown your life is
with weeds and vines,
lush, green and choking,
a beautiful and comfortable
death by neglect.

The temptation is to let it be.
What difference, after all, will another week make,
another month?
But then you remember the beauty
of what once was,
it's stately strength,
and how day by day,
week by week,

it has become lost,
and even though you cannot
see it now, you can imagine it,
and even if you cannot know
where to begin, you know
that every snip of the clippers,
every dead branch you create,
also creates hope,

a resurrection from the weeds,
and so, still overwhelmed,
you begin.

===============

The picture is of a place in West Pawlet, VT, my new home town. It used to be a factory for school lockers, and currently houses a couple of apartments. I find it a fascinatingly beautiful building, overgrown and mysterious. You can click on it for a larger view.

Tom

Moving Day

Welcome to my new home on the internet. Whether you just stumbled on this blog, or have been directed here from my old blog, I am glad you found me. Why the move and change? Put it down to a strong sense of place.

My roots are Surry County, Virginia. My grandfather lived there, in an old, pre-Civil war farm house called Shady Grove, where he lived most of his adult life. He moved into the place as a sharecropper and at the time, the house was bereft of paint, and the yard and farm largely abandoned and wild. In time, long before I was born, he had worked hard enough that he could buy the house, forests and surrounding farmland. He earned a good living his whole life there on the farm, wrestled the yard into a thing of beauty, and painted and repaired the house into a stately, warm place to live.

Growing up, I spent part of my summers there, getting up early in the morning, feeding the hogs, working in the garden and sometimes hoeing peanuts in the summer sun. I spent many late afternoons and summer evenings drifting in a rowboat on the mill pond deep in the woods behind the house. That place, particularly the mill pond, came to represent home to me, and still sings of home and peace to me like no other spot on the earth. I found an acceptance and peace there that is buried in my DNA somehow.

I mostly grew up in Richmond, Virginia. Somehow, Richmond left less of an impression on me than my grandfather's farm, but some of it, particularly the tumble of rocks on the James River where the fall line breaks up the perfect smoothness of the broad river, still sings to me. As a teenager, the river was a long, long bike ride from my house. Today though, my sister lives on a bluff very near the James, and one of my favorite things to do is to walk down to the riverside and sit on a rock listening to the rushing water and feeling it on my feet as they dangle from one of the flat gray boulders.

Southwest Virginia has been my home for the past thirty one years. In that time I have come to love the place: the mountains with their valleys, trails and streams, the small towns with their old churches, antique shops, and sense of history; and most of all, I have grown to appreciate the warmhearted people I find everywhere here. It has become home for me.

What do all these places have in common? They are in Virginia. Virginia is my home. I define myself as a Virginian, and while aware of the flaws (we southerners are not all that, all the time, alas.) I love my state's heritage, history, beauty and people.

Yet, at nearly 54 years of age, having lived all my life in Virginia, I have decided to move to Vermont, to begin and become a Vermonter.

Love takes me there, but beyond love of a woman, I have fallen in love with Vermont and New England over the past year or so. Much of southern Vermont, where this very day I am closing on a house, reminds me of Southwest Virginia - tall green mountains, small towns and a palpable sense of place and community.

So moving to Vermont is not like moving to Bavaria or Timbuktu, but there are a lot of differences, and a lot of changes ahead. Many of those differences are part of what drew me to Vermont, and many I have yet to discover, for the discovery comes only with a sustained time in a place.

This blog is a place where I will write of some of them, a journal of change and exploration. And as I did with my former blog, I will continue to fill it with my photographs and poems as well.

So read on. Come again. I hope you learn a thing or two along with me, and enjoy sharing part of the journey.

Tom

PS - The photograph at the header of this blog is of a barn not far from my new home in West Pawlet, Vermont.