Indian Summer: An Untitled Poem by Emily Dickinson

Indian summer:
"These are the days when Birds come back -- "
by Emily Dickinson

These are the days when Birds come back --
A very few -- a Bird or two --
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies resume
The old -- old sophistries of June --
A blue and gold mistake.

Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee --
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief.

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear --
And softly thro' the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf.

Oh Sacrament of summer days,
Oh Last Communion in the Haze --
Permit a child to join.

Thy sacred emblems to partake --
Thy consecrated bread to take
And thine immortal wine!

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

American poet

"New Farm Tractor" by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

This Remembrance Day (as they call it in Canada) is the tenth anniversary of the death of my father, who was a veteran American farmer. I dedicate this poem by American author Carl Sandburg to the memory of my father Hugh M. Gilmer (1914-2006), who grew up on a farm and who for most of his adult life was a full-time farmer. He never had a mule, Mr. Sandburg. But before he bought his first farm tractor, he did have two draft horses, a Belgian and a Percheron, that he used on his farm. He retired from farming at the age of 89.


NEW FARM TRACTOR
from Smoke and Steel (1920)
by Carl Sandburg

Snub nose, the guts of twenty mules are in your cylinders and transmission.
The rear axles hold the kick of twenty Missouri jackasses.
It is in the records of the patent office and the ads there is twenty horse power pull here.
The farm boy says hello to you instead of twenty mules -- he sings to you instead of ten span of
        mules.
A bucket of oil and a can of grease is your hay and oats.
Rain proof and fool proof they stable you anywhere in the fields with the stars for a roof.
I carve a team of long ear mules on the steering wheel -- it's good-by now to leather reins and the
        songs of the old mule skinners.

"God's Only Begotten Son": A poem of Jesus Christ

GOD'S ONLY BEGOTTEN SON
A poem of Jesus Christ
from the Bible: John 3:16-18 (King James Version)

For God so loved the world,
That he gave his only begotten Son,
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
But have everlasting life.
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world;
But that the world through him might be saved.
He that believeth on him is not condemned:
But he that believeth not is condemned already,
Because he hath not believed in the name
Of the only begotten Son of God.

Four Ways a Man May Give a Gift

FOUR WAYS A MAN MAY GIVE A GIFT

Adapted by Monty Gilmer

from notes written by Evelyn M. Gilmer (1923-2016)

     The first way a man may give a gift is as a duty. He might pay an account, or he might send a remittance to a tax collector. He might do so with reluctance or with such a bad grace that it would be almost better not to do so at all.

     The second way a man may give a gift is to find self-satisfaction. He thinks more of his own pleasant feeling than he does of the feelings of the person receiving the gift. To give for satisfaction more than from any real desire to help is in essence selfish giving. One is giving a gift to oneself rather than to another person.

     The third way a man may give a gift is from motives of prestige. The real source of giving in this case is not love but pride. A gift is given not to help but to glorify the giver. Maybe the gift is even given to pile up credit with God, as if any man could put God in his debt.

     The fourth way a man may give a gift is under love's compulsion. Although the other three ways are not wholly bad because the gift was given, this fourth one is the only real way to give. Where love is the motive, one cannot help giving, because the sight of a soul in need awakens a desire that cannot be silenced or stilled. This is, in fact, to give in God's way. It was because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son (see John 3:16 in the Bible).

     As a Latin proverb says, "He gives twice who gives quickly." In other words, a prompt response to a request for something, such as money or help, is of greater value than a more generous offering given late. And yet, the finest gifts are given not when they are demanded but before they are asked for.

"God, the Chicken and the Egg" by Monty Gilmer

GOD, THE CHICKEN AND THE EGG

by Monty Gilmer

     Someone once said, "The chicken probably came before the egg because it is hard to imagine God wanting to sit on an egg."

     According to the Bible, the chicken (a "winged fowl" that is flightless) did come before the egg. Genesis 1:20-23 (King James Version) reads: "And God said, 'Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.' And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.' And the evening and the morning were the fifth day."

Ambrose Bierce on a vote and an elector

     In his satirical lexicon The Devil's Dictionary (1911) Ambrose Bierce defined a vote as "The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country." You remember Bierce. He was the fellow who identified an elector as "One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man's choice."  -- Monty Gilmer

Ambrose Bierce (1842-ca. 1914)

American author