Journal of Sacred Work

Ah, what a pleasure
   to cross a stream in summer –
sandals in hand.
  -Yosa Buson (1716-1784) translated by Steven D. Carter

   
Ever since the days when school released me into summer, I have treasured this time of year. Nature herself, tired from birthing spring, leans back in her easy chair. Flowers sway & sweat in summer’s swelter. Here in the south, people of all ages walk & speak more slowly. Even the trees look lazy. The air exhales aromas of cut grass, boxwood and magnolia. Everyone not at work is going swimming. Everyone at work wishes they were too.
   Across the centuries, as Buson’s haiku suggests, people have savored crossing streams in summer/sandals in hand, the water cooling their ankles, the mud massaging their bare feet…

   One of July’s most common phrases is that, in this month, we are "knee-deep in summer." In place of winter’s naked trees, we find ourselves enfolded in delicious green. Longer days force the night to crowd her performance into a smaller envelope. And summer nights are made sweeter by their brevity.
   "Let stars appear/and the moon disclose her silver horn," Jane Kenyon wrote in her poem, "Let Evening Come." And in the summer night the stars remind us that we are, ourselves, stardust. I heard a physicist affirm this on a program about Einstein. Recently, a friend shared the same discovery with me right before church as if reporting a joyful news bulletin. "I just learned that all of us are stardust!" she gleamed, a smile dressing her face. "Doesn’t that make you happy?" she said, as she turned to take her seat.
   I didn’t have an immediate answer. Should we be happy that all of us are made from stardust? Perhaps I was being too analytical. Maybe the science of the physicist was still too near too my ears.
   So I asked Love what she would say about this? This is what I heard.

Summer Stardust

If we are no more than stardust,
& no less,
then we are luminous
& we are dust.

You are thinking of the stars
while I am thinking of the dust
as we, star & dust, spun by the universe,
summer a breath of Mother Time.

Above us, magnolia’s green
& our soul’s twirl,
mixing heat in summer’s lap
unaware that, backstage,

stars, dust & quarter moon are taking
their places for tonight’s dance
& even the dawn
will wear languid eyes.

-Erie Chapman