December

"December is Christmas...

With each setting of the sun,

 and the rising and setting of the moon 

and stars in the dark sky, the wonder grows.

 It is not so much in color as in absence of color, 

less in sound than in absence of sound, 

not at all in fragrance but in absence of fragrance;

 that is of the earthly color, sound and fragrance. 

Each day there seems less of all that has been familiar

 in the earlier months of the year, 

and more that is new though not strange.

 Gradually the world becomes another place, 

suffused by gentle radiance, 

cupped in innocence and infinite wisdom, 

carried aloft by unseen winds which bear it

 closer and closer to the Source of all wonder."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

November

"November is a russet apple with a glint of gold in

it's rough brown skin,

 one dry leaf clinging to its blackened stem, 

 a brisk spicy flavor at its core. 

It is cider working in dark barrels,

 reddish brown sawdust blanketing the sills,

 amber-eyed cows chewing all day in the stanchions.

 It is stately fowl on yard parade in brown and gray feathers 

and red combs, and many brown eggs in the barn cellar nests at night. 

It is grey crocks filled with barberry sauce

 and great cubes of translucent pumpkin, 

scarlet cranberries drying in the open chamber

. A lamp or lantern held high in the dark dairy

 reveals a mosaic of jellies, preserves, shrubs, 

wines, bottled herbs and yellow cream rising in shallow pans."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

October

October is age regal and triumphant, 

the impartial judge on the bench,

 the dowager duchess, wise, strong, 

and in excellent health, 

bearing easily the weight of velvet robes 

which change with shifting light from deep blue

 to plum color and crimson,

 of heavy chains, heavy pins, 

heavy rings all of gold, 

all of the great keys which this month

 is the keeper of the coin of the realm

 secreted in the robe's capacious pockets."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

September

"September is a banner of soft purple 

and metallic gold proudly 

suspended across the sky...

The sand y roads are bordered deep 

in goldenrod and wild asters.

Sweet apples and Porters are yellow

 in the orchards and blue

pearmains are ripening.

 Maple trees are touched with yellow

 from the first frost.

Pumpkins are drawn by the cartload 

from the fields and stacked beside the barn."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

August (A Little Late)

"August is hot. Opulent, tired, thirsty, hot...

She asks no questions about the purpose of life,

is heavy with answers as a cow with milk

 coming up the pasture lane at days end.

 A child is to play and get into mischief

 and do his chores and eat and sleep and grow...

August is the meeting place of the currents of the year.

She feels the meeting within her,

the waters from many directions 

surging into a mighty eddy;

but she is not shaken by it, 

encompasses it calmly

 as she carried her children to full term 

despite their struggles to find a way out

 of the pocket in which she held them

 until it was time for them to go.

She is even faintly amused by the surging

 and eddying as she was by the struggles of her unborn."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

July

"July is the beginning of the year's prime of life...

The long days roll by on greased axles,

laden with tall grass, new-cut and drying in the sun,

the corn knee-high and ready for hoeing,

potatoes, squashes and pumpkins in bloom,

sweet peas climbing up chicken wire to cover the shed wall

with pink, white, red and lavender,

pond lilies starring every spring-fed pool of water

and filling a washtub under the dooryard tree.

The nights are short and the dark is thin and soft,

a-twinkle with  fireflies,

heavy with the heat of the sun 

which has scarcely gone down

when the east begins to brighten,

and rich with the smell of fruit and flowers and swamp

and the sea on the other side of the mountain."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

June

"All the smells of winter are washed away 

by the flood tide of the perfumes of June--

an incomparable blend of a thousand flowers

 caressed by the sun, 

of fruit springing from bud in the orchard,

 of roots thickening in loose, rich soil, 

of sea turn, swamp mist, running brooks,

 birch and pine. 

The outdoors comes in and there is no indoors...

Small children, barefoot, roam at will,

 wading brooks, peering into muskrat holes,

feeding small birds in the hollows of trees, 

following woods trails, digging sand banks. 

Women's fingers are pink-stained at night

from the picking and hulling

 which bring strawberry short-cake to the table."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

May

"May is the tender promise we know will come true.

If in the earlier months any of us has doubted that

God loves his children, every one, we doubt no longer.

The sun has come back and rises north of the mountain,

gently flooding the windows of the east chamber

 as it comes up, and casting a soft light

 on the brown kitchen wall

behind the supper table as it goes down.

The grass is green and growing and the cattle are out.

One night at milking time a 

new calf is brought up from the pasture.

The seed is in and the long rows of twin leaves rise from the earth.

The apple trees are in rosy bloom, the blossoms of 

wild pear and cherry like white torches 

against the dark woods and the stone wall.

Day and night the air is bright and sweet 

with the scent of budding fruit, 

the flash of wings, and the song

of birds building nests among the flowers.

The whistle of the whippoorwill is a bugle call to summer."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

April

"April is the two-week-old kitten, the 

month-old lamb, the six-month-old heifer,

the two-year-old girl.

Too young to know it has either past or future,
 it wears the ribbon of the fleeting present
 as part of itself--a crisp bowknot
of iridescent taffeta changing with the colors of the sky

from the pale pink of dawn
 to the pale blue of noon
and the dusty rose of sunset.

It dances on legs too unsteady to support it,
 but they are unaffected by the pull of gravity
and touch the feathery pillow of the earth
only to spring away."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

March

"March is the daybreak hour of the year. 

The face of the earth is still dark but the shadow is lifting....

In the air itself we feel, smell, taste, see a change

 as delicate and tentative as it is undeniable and certain.

 Though hurled against us by the wind,

 its touch is as soft as the wing tips of angels. 

It's ethereal warmth, too slight for registry 

on the thermometer, seeps through our heavy clothing. 

Its fragrance has no name,

 being not from anything that is,

 but from all that is to come...

March brings a silent ecstasy, a still excitement

matched only by that of a woman 

suddenly pausing, hushed, incredulous,

yet sure she feels the first faint, 

fluttering motion of a longed-for child."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

February

"February is the uncertain month,

 neither black or white 

but all shades between by turns.

 Nothing is sure...

Each year is new and strange in February.

 It's promises, if any, are like

 shadow pictures on the wall;

one cannot grasp and hold to them;

 blow out the light and 

they are no longer there."

Gladys Hasty Carroll

January

"January is on a blackboard covered 

almost entirely in white by a soft crayon 

of schoolhouse chalk used on its side

 in bold powerful fingers. 

The board had been scrubbed clean,

 to start with, and uncovered lines and spaces 

which form the crude pattern stand out glistening, 

three-dimensional, and move toward you,

 gathering you in.

The still month."

Gladys Hasty Carroll