Waunakee Farm by Wilbur Pearson
Images awaken and delight the heart; they transport the mind; they can even heal. My invitation to you, as reader, is to look at these quartets, one at a time, until you have collected a full scene. Then close your eyes and be there. If a chokecherry or tasseled corn or a badger isn’t familiar, release the specific—feel.
Meditation on “Fern Hill”*
High in a chokecherry breeze
starlings in flight formation
and a meadowlark.
A gentle breeze pushes us together
…
The sun, retreating up the willowy trunk
leaves me alone swinging on a single branch
The Milky Way my halo
soft new corn stretches for stars
…
The woods are mine
dawn-soft light between oak and elm
dew on violet leaves
summer sonata.
…
Time is mine the summer long
Heat waves me through
tasseled drying corn
to fall with crimson leaves
Shadows blend land and horizon
deer graze in free meadows
badgers make hidden rounds
moonlight slants across the waning sky
These evocative quartets are excerpts from “Meditation on ‘Fern Hill,’” one poem of “The Waunakee Farm” series, poet Peter Schneider’s shared images rooted in the rural life of the 1940s and part of his poetry collection entitled Line Fence. Upon recently rereading Line Fence, I paused at “Meditation on ‘Fern Hill’” with a new thought connected to my reading about images in My Grandfather’s Blessings. Its author, Dr. Rachel Remen, had been invited to England to lecture to professional groups on the use of guided imagery with people who are ill. A few listeners had approached her afterwards with interest. One listener, a head ward Sister, had told her that in England only a psychiatrist could “enter” into the personal life of a patient. That same sister had then brought an elderly man forward who wanted to be introduced to Dr. Remen. A retired hospital janitor, he described the hospital as “drab and cheerless,” even with the best efforts of the staff. So months before, he had begun bringing posters and fine-art prints from his own collection to show to patients, lending them his art to put on the walls of their rooms. One patient, looking at Georges Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,* had responded by telling him that she wished she could be there. He had suggested that they both close their eyes for a few minutes and pretend that they were. She then began describing the river, the grass, and the birds’ songs. The janitor had noticed that the patients he visited found pleasure and relaxation in having the art. Because of this he had expanded his visits, which at that point had been continuing for many months. As he finished speaking and Dr. Remen told him how nice it must be to have him visit, she looked up and into the eyes of the head sister, where all she saw was shock.
My realization is, “When we take in new information as an impossibility, we may shut a door exactly when we ought to open it. If instead, we create thoughts and images of openness and consideration, we sow the seeds of choice, to accept or reject but now our knowledge arises from our experience.”
* “Fern Hill” is a poem by Dylan Thomas, a well-known Welsh poet. d. 1953. In “Meditation on ‘Fern Hill,’” Schneider uses lines from Dylan’s poem (not included here) as inspiration for his odes to nature.
* Peter Schneider, “Meditation on ‘Fern Hill,’” in
Line Fence
(Amherst, MA: Amherst Writers & Artists Press, 2006) 25–27. “Peter Schneider is a poet who has also been a farmer, theologian, counselor, co-director of Amherst Writers & Artists, and father of four children. A Wisconsin native, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. “The Waunakee Farm” poems are “a composite of observation and hearsay in the experience and imagination of a boy between ages five and fifteen on a Wisconsin farm, 1935 to 1945.”
* Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging (New York, NY: The Berkeley Publishing Group, 2000) 297–99. She has been counseling those with chronic and terminal illnesses for more than twenty years.
* Georges Seurat was a 19th century French painter. His Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is one of his most famous works. Painted in 1884, in a technique of small dots or strokes of color called Pointillism, the scene is of Parisiens at a park on the banks of the river Seine River. https://www.artble.com/artists/georges_seurat/paintings/a_sunday_afternoon_on_the_island_of_la_grande_jatte