Life is the color of things: of places, of thoughts, of people I have loved, of sky and trees. I know gray well, and I have taken from gray a gift: the gift of gray is to know – for the first time – the color of things.
Life is the color of things and it is good to breathe in the riches of sky, of earth, of shadows across the sky, of green grass that carries the fragrance of earth, of long orange autumns, bright maples, of gray and darkened days of winter, of spring, snow banks melting, of a navy-blue awakening, dawn.
The color of things lives in the eyes of friends, places where sadness lurks, where pain is not covered by dull happiness.
Life is the color of things: this gift, earth, all that is in it, the heart, the heart, full:
And all that is in it.
Life is the color of things. Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, Oakland, View Place, 2025
When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily. I am so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment, and never hurry through the world,
but walk slowly, and bow often. Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, “Stay awhile.” The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say, “and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”
photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, October 10, 2025, “Among the trees in my yard”
As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I majored in English. I didn’t say a word – at least not aloud, in class, as response to a question or to ask a question. I was silent, except when I visited with another student, someone who sat next to me in class, say. But I was listening. I had been silent in high school, too, although I joined a forensic society and was able to make presentations to my classes with ease. It would take several years – long years – after I’d graduated and moved on to my first position with the Federal Government as a Claims Representative for Social Security, assigned to the Field Office in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and even later, when I moved across country to study at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, to settle into life in Northern California, before I’d break through the shell of the shame that kept me silent as my busy mind answered questions, wrote papers.
The name of the class intrigued me. “Theology and Literature.” And so, as was my way, I sat silently in class as the instructor – an Episcopal Priest who seemed to enjoy teaching (I remember that!) began the first meeting by explaining that we’d be writing papers, and that to receive an “A” in the course, we would also be expected to take part in class discussions. I knew that an “A” was out for me then – because I never spoke up in class. But I was an avid student; I loved the literature and I loved the focus we took. And I knew this: I had a mind for what we were reading, what we were studying, for what the professor brought to us.
I wrote the requisite papers and completed the semester without having said a word. And I waited along with the other students as the final paper of the semester was returned. And I waited also, to receive my final grade in the class. There it was: “A.”
I’d done it! And that “A” got my attention. It confirmed my thought that I had a way with this kind of thinking, for theology, for a way to bring together literature – which I loved – and theology – which I also loved.
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My semester in a student in “Theology and Literature” came to mind today as my husband and I looked over the collection of a lifetime of poems I hope to have published. I’ve always thought: “someday.” It seems that in these elder years, the “somedays” of life are having to step into the light, or be banished forever from my hopes, my dreams. “Someday, I’d like to have my poems published.” The sting of jealousy that accompanies my experience when a friend publishes still arrives some days. But someday – my someday – seems to be now.
If the world hadn’t stopped its incessant orbit, its frantic motion – one day to the next – if all the people hadn’t halted their wars, their value counted in barrels of oil, I expect I wouldn’t have seen the sun brightening, blue by blue, or known the smell of the morning air, fresh, as I go sniffing like a cat to catch a whiff of what has gone before. I would not have opened my window, grateful, or wondered at the sound of humans calling into the night to give thanks.
I expect I wouldn’t have stopped midday to pray, my arms lifted beside the lonely tree, its branches lifted, also, in gratitude for the magic of the sun, the sky, the dusk and dawn. We would not have murmured together at the light of the lilies at dusk, at the quiet that hangs over the morning air, at the call of the crow hoarding its bounty: all of us inhabitants of this magnificent earth.
We trek to a place of solitude, this lonely place, to sit, to listen to the water, to the wind, to the silence: the silence speaks to us as we walk, as we sit.
And in this lonely place the loneliness drains from us – from our arms, our legs, our beating hearts – richness fills us: the voices of the pines, the balsam, and the birch which call out to us in the wind. Gentle, the breeze ruffles the needles, the leaves.
We have searched – endlessly – for this place: for the solitude that is in loneliness, for the depth that is boundless, without form.
Here, the emptiness fills us, completes us.
—Mary Elyn Bahlert, “At Solitude Swale,” Door County, Wisconsin, 5/2025
At Solitude Swale, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, May 25, 2025
