March 17, 2024
Presenters: April Moore, Barbara Moore, Lee Anna Farrall, Andrew Henry, Pete Rapp, Linda Dove
With the coming of light after long winter darkness, it’s a good time for us to look forward to the turning of our seasons. With this service, if a little prematurely, we contemplate Spring Meeting Summer. Poetry is an ideal medium for us to contemplate the various responses of human beings to seasonal changes, especially for us in the Shenandoah Valley blessed with all four seasons. Conforming with copyright restrictions, we focus mostly on poets from the 16th. to early 20th. centuries whose sentiments we 21st. century people can relate to. I’m grateful to the congregational folk who are about to share these poems with you, to April who researched some of the old-time poets we feature, and to all those the behind the scenes who put in the effort to make this service possible.
SPRING
The First Dandelion
Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s closing emerging, As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been, Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass—innocent, golden, calm as dawn, The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face. Walt Whitman, 1819-1892. Poem 1888 from Leaves of Grass
False Smile
March smiled and buds burst. But the sun’s welcome was false. The clear eye of the sky clouded today to dull the blossoms of spring. Temperatures fell. So did my mood. And now on this first April day the ear of the wind whistles and thuds and throbs outside. And I hunker down once more in dark, interior, silence. Linda Ankrah-Dove. ©
To Daffodils
Fair daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon: As yet the early-rising sun Has not attained his noon. Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to the evensong; And, having played together, we Will go with you along. We have short time to stay, as you, We have as short a Spring! As quick a growth to meet decay As you, or any thing We die, As your hours do, and dry Away Like to the summer’s rain Or as the pearls of morning’s dew Ne’er to be found again. Robert Herrick, 1591-1674.
The Lamb
Little Lamb , who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee; Gave thee life and bid thee feed By the stream and o’er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such a tender voice Making all the vales rejoice? Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee, Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee: He is called by thy name, For He calls Himself a Lamb. He is meek and he is mild; He became a little child. I a child and thou a lamb, We are called by His name. Little Lamb, God bless thee, Little Lamb, God bless thee. William Blake, 1757-1827.
Darwinian Pluck
Never plant a garden if you are squeamish. At the cycling of each growing season I cringe at the killing chores ahead. Each spring I get down on my knees to peer along long lines of sassy seedlings— this year, the beets, the peppers and the chard. I squint at seed packets to discover how much space each infant needs to thrive. The instructions prove sobering to read. Thin. Space twelve or eighteen inches apart. Thin. In small print. To think that one syllable dictates I must decide on life or death for slender stems of sappy, growing green. So, for the sake of robust growth, I choose some, pinch out others. Forefinger and thumb pinch, pluck, and discard young life. Linda Ankrah-Dove. ©.
Haiku
In the city fields Contemplating Cherry trees . . . Strangers are like friends. Kobayashi Issa, 1763-1828.
Loveliest of Trees
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow. A.E. Houseman,-1859-1936.
Vixen
Among the taller wood with ivy hung, The old fox plays and dances round her young. She snuffs and barks if any passes by And swings her tail and turns prepared to fly. The horseman hurries by, she bolts to see, And turns agen, from danger never free. If any stands she runs among the poles And barks and snaps and drive them in the holes. The shepherd sees them and the boy goes by And gets a stick and progs the hole to try. They get all still and lie in safety sure, And out again when everything’s secure, And start and snap at blackbirds bouncing by To fight and catch the great white butterfly. John Clare, 1793-1864.
SOLSTICE
Turnings
Summer solstice, summit of the year, the longest day, the shortest night, horizon silver-lit before the waning down to winter and all our future turnings. Linda Ankrah-Dove.©.
SUMMER
Dusk in June
Evening, and all the birds In a chorus of shimmering sound Are easing their hearts of joy For miles around. The air is blue and sweet, The far first stars are white,— Oh let me like the birds Sing before night. Sara Teasdale, 1884-1933.
Bird Song
The bird piped long with unfettered song, one high note repeating in the canopy of summer trees. Shaded in the valley far below, I listened for each note repeating, and an ending. The silence quivered, waited for an answer. It did not come. So I piped my own unfettered song, one high note repeating, in praise for every bounded, sunlit hour I live on. Linda Ankrah-Dove.©.
Haiku
My good father raged When I snapped The peony . . . Precious memory! Tairo, 1730-c.1788.
Daylily
Proud plant standing tall in your tasseled robes, your lustrous lips a silky scarlet. Your slender neck holds high a petalled crown. Swollen tongues stick out for honey-pollen licking. You pout with your blond buds, plump and puffed, poised for their skyward trumpet blast. Unaware you are, dear Lily, your brash brilliance is fragile. It will fade tomorrow. Or, the grazing deer may behead you overnight. Linda Ankrah-Dove.©.
A Thunder Storm
The wind began to rock the grass With threatening tunes and low,— He flung a menace at the earth, A menace at the sky. The leaves unhooked themselves from trees And started all abroad; The dust did scoop itself like hands And throw away the road. The wagons quickened on the streets, The thunder hurried slow; The lightning showed a yellow beak, And then a livid claw. The birds put up the bars to nests, The cattle fled to barns; There came one drop of giant rain, And then, as if the hands That held the dams had parted hold, The waters wrecked the sky, But overlooked my father's house, Just quartering a tree. Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886.
Hawks Still Soar
Fifteen years gone by since I moved to quiet pasture. Now condos, townhomes, boxy single-families with fenced-off patios all hide the sunrise promise. Yarrow and flowering prickly lettuce, wet with Weed-B-Gon or bleach, wither in cracks between neighbors’ driveway bricks. This summer, what must be must be. But still I put out sugared water to tempt a tawny humming bird or an insect’s corpse for a trundling turtle’s snack. Today, I stride out from my front door to join the oaks and sycamores on greener, less curated soil. I steer wide of trucks hauling dirt, cranes dropping roofs on walls, machines spraying grass seed like tiny bullets on granite rock and burnt brown clay. I drive a few miles to a country lane where buttercup eyes glint and wink. Wild grasses wave from roadside banks. Horses graze by a stream in a willow’s shade. An old ash tree bends with the prevailing wind. In blue skies of unfenced views, hawks still soar. Linda Ankrah-Dove.©.
August Midnight
A shaded lamp and a waving blind, And the beat of a clock from a distant floor: On this scene enter—winged, horned, and spined— A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore; While mid my page there idly stands A sleepy fly, that rubs its hand . . . . Thus meet we five, in this still place, At this point of time, this point in space. —My guests besmear my new-penned line, Or bang the lamp and fall supine. ‘God’s humblest, they!’ I muse, Yet why? They know earth-secrets that know not I. Thomas Hardy, 1840-1928.
Green Valley Pastures
I bought a cottage in the Shenandoah Valley. Wild daisies, knotty scabious, honeysuckles, City blocks, the office, crumbled into memory. March to October pink and purple plants paint the pastures. Blossoms sing and roots feed the green that births new life. Bald chipmunk babies frolic in the dew. In summer, heat burns rolling landscapes golden. Mustards wave their seedpods like fancy fans creating breeze. Solidago blooms as the season fades to fall. Appalachian peaks stand constant, solid gray. Glowing embers fire the westward skies. I live with the seasons as they come and go. And now, in the long shadow of my winter, I sing a green and gold and purple song of praise, thankful for the inventings and recyclings of long years. Linda Ankrah-Dove.©.