August’s Backyard Visitor
Tag: nature
Summer’s Surest Guide
after a blade of grass, grasped by lightning bug
by Donald S. Yarab
I saw it—yes—just there,
in the silence between breaths:
a blade of grass bowed not by wind
but by a single flicker of light,
that tender emissary of dusk—
the lightning bug,
that priest of fire who blesses every meadow.
O you small bearer of green and gold,
what vast wisdom coils within your tiny belly?
What songs do you blink to the darkened world,
what truths do you flash to the blade you hold?
I, too, have grasped the green earth in my palm—
felt its tremble and thrum,
watched a whole summer declare itself
in the way grass leans toward starlight.
Do not speak to me of empires and theories—
tell me instead how the hush after thunder
is where the soul begins,
how the firefly remembers the sun,
and carries its pulse
through the hollows of night.
Here is your scripture:
dew-wet grass,
the pulse of insect wings,
the scent of warm loam rising at twilight—
and yes, the low chant of crickets,
singing hosannas in the key of soil.
I stand barefoot in this republic of clover,
declaring allegiance to the unnoticed:
to the tree frog’s stillness near an old stump,
the clover’s soft petition beneath my heel,
the breeze that forgets no leaf,
the dandelion seed drifting without regret,
the shimmer barely seen,
the flash in the periphery,
the small, bright pulse that stirs the dusk
and reminds me—ah!—I am alive.
For is it not enough to say:
a lightning bug chose a blade of grass,
and that was revelation?
On the Nature of Moments
Some time ago—perhaps a year or more—I shared the thought with a friend that, in the absence of a life partner, career milestones, or the outward markers many associate with ongoing joy and fulfillment, I found myself sustained by something smaller, more elusive, yet no less profound: moments. Fleeting as they are, these glimpses—of joy, beauty, tenderness, or connection—carry a weight that lingers long after they pass. Whether in laughter with a friend, a burst of color in nature, the unexpected joy found in art and music, or the hush of shared silence, these moments are what remain.
This conversation was brought to mind earlier today, during a pause in some simple yard work. A robin—one I have come to recognize—perched beside me on a rock for nearly twenty minutes. He did not fly, only hopped, watching me as if we were resting together. That brief companionship, quiet and unexpected, brought back the full force of that earlier insight.
The poem that follows is a first, rough attempt to give shape to that reflection.
Moments
by Donald S. Yarab
After so long,
I see it now—
life is not the grand arc
we thought we were writing,
not triumph etched in time
or years stacked with care.
It is moments.
The held door,
a beat longer than required.
A cloud painting itself
across the sky.
A flower blooming
through a crack in concrete.
The hum of a bee,
the song of a bird,
a friend’s first hello—
welcome, familiar music in the air.
Laughter spilling like light
through a quiet room.
A touch that speaks
without language.
Sunlight flickering
through leaves—
nature’s own Morse code.
The warm drift from the kitchen:
garlic, hope,
onions, memory.
The first bite of something sweet
dissolving on the tongue.
The joy of someone you love
laughing till they snort,
till they can’t breathe,
till you’re laughing too
at nothing,
at everything.
These—
small rebellions
against the world’s weight:
its monotony, its cold indifference.
But the moments—
oh, they persist.
They slip through the cracks
of our hardest days
and remind us
why we stay,
why we watch,
why we dare to hope
for just one more:
one more kindness,
one more beauty,
one more laugh,
one more flicker of light—
each a defiance,
each a benediction
in this brief, bright,
impossible gift
of being alive.
The Sermon on the Stump: Beneath the Rain
The Sermon on the Stump
by Donald S. Yarab
It was raining. The crowd—
too few to be a crowd—perhaps
a gathering, or the assembled,
more ghosts than listeners,
their coats darkened not just by weather
but by the weight of waiting.
He stood on the stump,
not of authority, but of loss—
the remnant of a tree felled long before,
as if the forest had once believed
in clearing room for prophecy.
He spoke not of thunder,
but of hush. Not of redemption,
but of what remained
after the soil forgot its seed.
The gathering, if such it was,
did not cheer, nor weep.
They listened with the rain,
as if the water itself
were translating his broken cadence
into something nearly true.
He spoke not of hope, or loss,
of tomorrow, or yesterday,
or even today.
He named no sins,
offered no absolution,
held no book but the hush
of water sliding down his sleeve.
His voice did not rise.
It pooled.
Like the rain in the hollow of the stump
beneath him.
He said only:
“You have heard the wind.
Now hear the stillness it leaves behind.”
And they did not answer.
Not from doubt,
but because his words were not questions.
They were roots—
groping downward through silence,
seeking something older than belief.
A dog barked in the distance.
A child shifted,
not from boredom,
but from the weight of understanding
too early what it meant to stand still
in a world that keeps spinning.
He stepped down,
the stump left wet,
as if it had wept a little too.
And the assembled, if that is what they were,
dispersed—no closer,
no farther,
but marked.
Some were bewildered.
Others thought they were enlightened,
but knew not how.
Still others could not recall
what he had said,
only that his voice was comforting,
his cadence soothing—
not the lullaby of forgetfulness,
but the murmur of rain on old wood,
reminding them of something
they had never quite known.
No creed was offered.
No call to return.
Yet a few found themselves
walking more slowly afterward,
listening more intently
to trees, to puddles,
to silences that did not demand reply.
And the stump remained—
neither altar nor monument,
but a place where words once settled
like mist
and did not vanish.
Exploring Paul Klee’s Rosengarten and Emerson’s Philosophy
Periodically, I revisit the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson. His writing style is sometimes jarring but just as often sublime (Henry James, in Partial Portraits (1888), observed that Emerson “never really mastered the art of composition” (p. 20) while also acknowledging that “he had frequently an exquisite eloquence” (p. 32)). The visit is always profitable.
While rereading Emerson’s perhaps most famous essay, Self-Reliance (1847), I found that after much of my recent reading focusing so heavily on things temporal, especially in the past month (e.g., Carlo Rovelli’s masterful works The Order of Time, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, and Reality is Not What it Seems and Tom Siegfried’s lyrical The Number of the Heavens: A History of the Multiverse and the Quest to Understand the Cosmos), the following passage resonated in a manner it had not on previous readings of the essay:
“Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”
Such an extraordinary observation and lesson—that there is no lamentation of the past, or anticipation of the future, only presence for the rose.
Lamentation, or regret more precisely, I have long regarded as the most useless of human endeavors, if it is more than rectification of error, amends to others, and lessons learned. Anticipation, or anxiety about the future, is also too often misplaced and misdirected energy. Yes, we can and should make plans, but when the energy and effort extend beyond the necessary such that the future becomes a thief of reason, serenity, and equanimity, we are perilously close to toppling over.
The image of the rose in the above essay also brought to mind, fortuitously or not, a wonderful piece of art, Rosengarten (1920) by Paul Klee, ensconced in Lenbachhaus, an art museum in Munich.
After reading Helmut Friedel and Annegret Hoberg’s words about Klee from Der Blaue Reiter im Lenbachhaus München (2007) at the Lenbachhaus website, I readily envision Rosengarten as exemplifying the same harmonious integration of presence and timelessness that Emerson attributes to the rose. Created in 1920, the painting merges organic and constructed forms into a rhythmic whole. Klee’s garden unfolds as a grid of irregular, red-tinged rectangles, delicately framed by black lines, with roses—symbols of growth and vitality—scattered like musical notes across the composition. These roses, like Emerson’s, embody the eternal present; their rounded, spiral blooms suggest continuous life and creation. For Klee, as for Emerson, nature’s rhythms transcend human constructs of time.
Interestingly, Klee drew inspiration from music, speaking of “cultural rhythms” in his Bauhaus writings and comparing his visual compositions to musical structures. In Rosengarten, he achieves a polyphony of visual forms, where the temporal becomes spatial, and each element contributes equally to the whole. Just as Emerson’s rose is “perfect in every moment of its existence,” Klee’s garden suggests an infinite unfolding—a melody extending endlessly beyond the canvas.
Both Emerson and Klee challenge us to inhabit the present, to find harmony in life’s rhythms, and to appreciate the completeness inherent in each moment. The rose, whether in prose or paint, invites us to rise above time.
Northcoast Antiquarian 