Category: Autumn 2024

When you want a taste of peace,
this is a place you can come, this place
where the tall ones rise from the earth
and tower toward the sky.
Stand among them and be still;
stillness is their first gift to you.
Feel how you are rooted in the earth
and formed from it. Breathe in
the light and the moist, warm air.
Notice the dance of the life force
through your veins and the music
of its movement. Notice
how it is not contained within you,
but flows with your breath, carrying
your essence outward into the air
to dance with the essences of grass
and flowers, trees, and ants and birds,
your note forming part of the song.
Watch the trees allow their leaves
to color and fall, the seasons
to change, time to flow. Hear
them breathing the Yes.
Taste its essence in the air,
flowing into you, and through you,
beyond the farthest edge of time.

I’ve taken the time, these last few days of summer,
to visit my favorite haunts, the beloved
and familiar places, to bid the season farewell.
The trail through the woods is lined with gold
and trimmed with bits of crimson. The first
fallen leaves crunch beneath my boots. Still,
the green prevails and shocks of goldenrod
continue to hold the sun. The earth feels hungry
and eager, as if the first scattering of leaves
has whetted its appetite for the great feast
about to come. In the warm air, a fragrance
unique to autumn drifts leisurely by.
A squirrel sits on a stump munching
on a pine cone. A hawk soars overhead
as high as the clouds heaped in the sky.
It’s a perfect moment, a jewel of transitioning
seasons. I touch the leathery green skin
of an oak leaf, whispering to this last day
of summer my heartfelt thanks and farewell.

Let us sing now the ripening of corn,
primeval source of our sustenance,
earth become fruit to nurture her children,
colored with her ores, her soils, her sands.
Let us sing now with our ancestors
the ancient song of praise,
the great chant of thanksgiving
for the ripening, once more, of the corn.

Summer is packing her bags now,
saying her farewells, lowering the lights,
gathering her greens, ushering the last
of the songbirds toward the southern horizon.
At night, as she sleeps, autumn tiptoes in,
and smiling at all that she has done,
kisses her forehead and breathes
over the land to bless her going.

Autumn whispers in, dips her brush
in the gold of the afternoon sun,
and paints swaths of the bean field with its hue.
From the field’s far corner, a single maple
flashes crimson hints of things to come
through air alive with cricket song
and the distant cries of migrating geese
heading south.

Sometimes, when I stop to look, the beauty
that surrounds me is almost more I can bear.
Take, for example, these wild asters,
strewn in such abundance at the edges
of the field that their very numbers
make them seem commonplace.
And yet, what subtle hues their tiny petals wear;
how ornate their decorated centers,
how perfect the choreography of their opening,
one by one by one, until the entire pathway
sings with their delicate song.
Oh, again I say, please, let me never
take such gifts for granted.

I hereby grant you the right and duty
to see the world’s beauty.

May it bring you to your knees
in humility and joy.

The air clears. The clouds thin. The light reappears.
Suddenly the world is fresh again and glistening,
and all you want to do is breathe it in
until your own clouds dissolve,
until you, too, are filled with light
and joy, glistening with peace.

The subtlety is gone now. Color
sweeps in at a dizzying speed,
its thrust building by the hour.
Leaf, bough, and tree suddenly
don their scarlets and golds.
Autumn knows.
The joy is in the momentum.

Some moments
– perhaps this very one; is it? –
make all the rest of them worth it
and blanket the past with peace.
Whisper it to yourself: Yes.