This year is overflowing with dragonflies

Ancient, magical, calming and mystical.

 

They seem ever-curious about my chores - yet their visits are always brief.

They pause for a moment to rest and share a gaze between us

Alighting upon the cool freshly washed damp sheets 

As I clothespin each piece on the sagging but beloved clotheslines.

 

I ask them were they've been? Where they're going? And I wish them well 

They dart away, towards the sun, the breeze, and the magical freedom of

Their life in the meadows and the woods and the sky....

 

She Wondered

 

 

When she was eight, she'd wander down to the barn
And under the Summer sky she wondered
Of which is there more.....
Happy or Sad?

 

 

When she was twelve, she wondered
Of which is there more
Challenge or Ease?

 

 

When she was sixteen she wondered
Of which is there more
Pleasure or pain?

 

When she was twenty she wondered
Which was stronger....

Cruelty or kindness?

 

At thirty, she wondered (often)

Which was rewarded....
Honor or deceit?

 

At forty, she pondered
The meaning of life
The paths she'd chosen

(and the ones she hadn't)

 

By fifty she wondered
How she's arrived

Where she found herself

 

By sixty, seventy and eighty

Her hair grey, her stature shortened
Her heart weary ~ but full ~
She now spent her days knowing
There were no right nor wrong answers

No correct paths

No love unworthy of the pain of loss

No challenge unworthy of effort

 

She smiled to herself as she realized
She'd had all the answers at eight

There are happy days
There are sad days

 

There is it turned out
(all wondering aside)

Just the living of your life...

(Text by Issy Copyright 2013)

 

Ain't it the truth?

  Again and again I am reminded

of one of the simple complexities

that is the key to living life well:

"Some luck lies
 in not getting
what you thought you wanted
but getting what you have,
which once you have got it
you may be smart enough to see
 is what you would have wanted
had you known". 

Garrison Keillor

OR

As the Rolling Stones lyrics wisely mention  :-)

'You can't always get what you want,
no, you can't always get what you want
but if you try sometimes
 you just might find,
you get what you need'

Inherent Happiness

There is an inherent happiness, a soothing flow to life, amid the days on this farm. Not to infer such contentment can not or does not fill other hearts in different  settings with the same heartfelt ease. Indeed over the course of my life I've found happiness in other settings, other locations. Still my heart knows the full range of ease, the inherent reliable sustained happiness, is tethered to this unique amalgam, this place, this farm. These fields, woods, pastures, house, objects, barns, ghosts, animals, past, present and future are magic for me, to me, surrounding me.

The sun behaves differently in this valley.  The old cow pastures remain green from their generations here. Those pastures are intense with a depth of green that can not be delivered by  a contract with chem-lawn.

There are whispers of the past. Whispers from generations of lives that unfolded her and accumulated and layered their stories. Weathered wood. Hand worn  wood. Stair treads that are ever so gently cupped in the center from hundreds of thousands of trips up and down them by footfalls large and small.

Forgotten objects uncovered in corners and attics and in turned earth. Glass that should exists only in shards and fragments that flash from the soil as a glint in the sun and emerge unfathomably intact. *the image below is of such a piece*  Time machines, these pieces. My mind, or my heart, can not resist the mystery. The wondering game of who brought this here? Who touches it last? How did it come, sans obvious breakage, to be discarded here amid this field? How, oh how, did it survive unscathed in the many ensuing years?!

So many mysteries. Such a sense of time, ongoing,  An owl feather found. Crows that follow me. Pieces of glass, of metal, of horse harness, of life and times I can only image as I wend my way back to chosen aspects of their way of life. I plant my (few) crops. Pin the laundry to the cotton lines. Speak to the swallows. Listen to the woods.  Find the ferns.  Listen. Learn. Understand what matters.  Work intensely, sleep well. The food on the table is real. The bread from my hand, my oven  is real. The water drawn up from the ground is cold. I'm the current chapter in the story of the life of these fields, house, barn, birds, breeze....

Perhaps one day someone will wonder about me, about my life here on this land, in this old house.

This farm, nestled in this valley is magic. I suspect it always was. And now, its magic is for me.

Inherent happiness.

in·her·ent/inˈhi(ə)rənt/

Adjective:

Existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute