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In A Painful Time Of My Life I Went Often To A Wooded Hillside Where May Apples Grew By The Hundreds, And I Thought The Sourness Of Their Fruit Had A Symbolism For Me. Instead, I Was To Find Both Love And Happiness Soon Thereafter. So To Me [the May Apple] Is The Mandrake, The Love Symbol, Of The Old Dealers In Plant Restoratives.

-Hal Borland

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In A Painful Time

Hal Borland

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In A Painful Time Of My Life I Went Often To A Wooded Hillside Where May Apples Grew By The Hundreds, And I Thought The Sourness Of Their Fruit Had A Symbolism For Me. Instead, I Was To Find Both Love And Happiness Soon Thereafter. So To Me [the May Apple] Is The Mandrake, The Love Symbol, Of The Old Dealers In Plant Restoratives.

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Happiness And Love

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October Is The Fallen Leaf, But It Is Also A Wider Horizon More Clearly Seen. It Is The Distant Hills Once More In Sight, And The Enduring Constellations Above Them Once Again.

Catch A Vista Of Maples In That Long Light And You See Autumn Glowing Through The Leaves.... The Promise Of Gold And Crimson Is There Among The Branches, Though As Yet It Is Achieved On Only A Stray Branch, An Impatient Limb Or An Occasional Small Tree Which Has Not Yet Learned To Time Its Changes.

Green, The Color Of Growth, Or Surgent Life, Enwraps The Land. New Green, Still As Individual As The Plants Themselves. Cool Green, Which Will Merge As The Weeks Pass, The Summer Comes, Into A Canopy Of Shade Of Busy Chlorophyll.

The Hush Comes With The Deepening Of Autumn; But It Comes Gradually. Our Ears Are Attuned To It, Day By Quieter Day. But Even Now, If One Awakens In The Deep Darkness Of The Small Hours, One Can Hear It, A Foretaste Of Winter Silence. It’s A Little Painful Now, And A Little Lonely Because It Is So Strange.

All Man Has To Do Is Cooperate With The Big Forces, The Sun, The Rain, The Growing Urge. Seeds Sprout, Stems Grow, Leaves Spread In The Sunlight. Man Plants, Weeds, Cultivates And Harvests. It Sounds Simple, And It Is Simple, With The Simplicity Of Great Truths.

All Walking Is Discovery. On Foot We Take The Time To See Things Whole.

No Winter Lasts Forever; No Spring Skips Its Turn.

The Longer I Live And The More I Read, The More Certain I Become That The Real Poems About Spring Aren't Written On Paper. They Are Written In The Back Pasture And The Near Meadow, And They Are Issued In A New Revised Edition Every April.

All Our Yesterdays Are Summarized In Our Now, And All The Tomorrows Are Ours To Shape.

In A Painful Time Of My Life I Went Often To A Wooded Hillside Where May Apples Grew By The Hundreds, And I Thought The Sourness Of Their Fruit Had A Symbolism For Me. Instead, I Was To Find Both Love And Happiness Soon Thereafter. So To Me [the May Apple] Is The Mandrake, The Love Symbol, Of The Old Dealers In Plant Restoratives.

Happiness And Love

Time After Time ... Today's Crisis Shrinks To Next Week's Footnote To A Newly Headline Disaster.

The Earth Turns, And The Seasons, And For All His Pride And Power Man Cannot Temper The Winds Or Change Their Course. They Are The Unseen Tides That Shape Our Days And Our Years.

As I Stood And Watched The Mists Slowly Rising This Morning I Wondered What View Was More Beautiful Than This.

The Earth's Distances Invite The Eye. And As The Eye Reaches, So Must The Mind Stretch To Meet These New Horizons. I Challenge Anyone To Stand With Autumn On A Hilltop And Fail To See A New Expanse Not Only Around Him, But In Him, Too.

I Grew Up In Those Years When The Old West Was Passing And The New West Was Emerging. It Was A Time When We Still Heard Echoes And Already Saw Shadows, On Moonlit Nights When The Coyotes Yapped On The Hilltops, And On Hot Summer Afternoons When Mirages Shimmered, Dust Devils Spun Across The Flats, And Towering Cumulus Clouds Sailed Like Galleons Across The Vast Blueness Of The Sky. Echoes Of Remembrance Of What Men Once Did There, And Visions Of What They Would Do Together.

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April Is A Promise That May Is Bound To Keep.

Keeping Promises

Strip The Hills, Drain The Boglands, And You Create Flood Conditions Inevitably. Yet That Is What We Have Been Doing For Years.

You Fight Dandelions All Weekend, And Late Monday Afternoon There They Are, Pert As All Get Out, In Full And Gorgeous Bloom, Pretty As Can Be, Thriving As Only Dandelions Can In The Face Of Adversity.

[the Christmas Story] Is As Simple As Was The Man Himself And His Teaching. Sa Simple As The Sermon On The Mount Which Still Remains As The Ultimate Basis ... Of The Belief Of Free Men Of Good Will Everywhere.

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No Winter Lasts Forever, No Spring Skips Its Turn. April Is A Promise That May Is Bound To Keep, And We Know It.

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Each New Season Grows From The Leftovers From The Past. That Is The Essence Of Change, And Change Is The Basic Law.

Of All The Everyday Plants Of The Earth, Grass Is The Least Pretentious And The Most Important To Mankind. It Clothes The Earth Is An Unmistakable Way. Directly Or Indirectly It Provides The Bulk Of Man's Food, His Meat, His Bread, Every Scrap Of His Cereal Diet. Without Grass We Would All Starve, We And All Our Animals. And What A Dismal Place This World Would Be!

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If The Voice Of The Brook Was Not The First Song Of Celebration, It Must Have Been At Least An Obbligato For That Event.

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