restore us to memory

“Candlemas Day” by Marianne Stokes

🕯️

Brighid of the mantle, encompass us;
Lady of the Lambs, protect us;
Keeper of the hearth, kindle us;
Beneath your mantle, gather us,
And restore us to memory

~ Caitlín Matthews
(A Blessing for Hearth Keepers)

the first touch of winter

“At the First Touch of Winter, Summer Fades Away”
by Valentine Cameron Prinsep

The days move more swiftly now, too, with late dawns and early dusks. The days march toward the winter solstice like a winter farmhand with the wind at his back. And the long nights become the sleep of the earth itself, the rest, the waiting. The fox barks in the night, in the glitter of winter starlight. The deer shelter in the hemlock thickets on the mountain. The woodchuck sleeps, breathing only once in five minutes. And that hurrying wind whistles in the naked maples. November is at hand. This is the hurrying, impatient wind of winter that I hear in the night.
~ Hal Borland
(Hal Borland’s Book of Days)

a little stardust caught

“Field of Corn” by Louis Valtat

The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little stardust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
~ Henry David Thoreau
(Walden)

pastoral

“May Pastoral” by Willard Metcalf

Besides this May
We know
There is Another —
How fair
Our Speculations of the Foreigner!

Some know Him whom We knew —
Sweet Wonder —
A Nature be
Where Saints, and our plain going Neighbor
Keep May!

~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #976)

be of good cheer


If I’ve got to see you when it’s raining deep inside the forest
I got to see you at the waning of the moon  

Said oh, won’t you come on back?
Want you to be of good cheer
Come back home on the Celtic New Year

~ Van Morrison
♫ (Celtic New Year) ♫


A Cheerful Celtic New Year!