Category: Autumn 2024

You can’t go from emerald to crimson overnight.
No great work happens in the blink of an eye.
First you need a vision: Let us paint these woods
in autumn hues. Then you may begin.
And once you have begun, you must keep on.
A swath of red here, a bit of gold there, some orange,
a touch of yellow. Keep on. Hour by hour,
trusting, singing work’s joy, knowing your vision
was born in the Yes and that the Yes
will guide your hand, unfailingly.

Deep in the core of your heart
lives a knowing, a Something
surer than eye or word can tell,
a fixed reality, transcending
all illusion. Trust in that,
and flow in its grace.

Petal by petal, life’s flower unfolds,
a mystery, unfathomable, its beginnings
unknown, its destination the source
of numberless words and whisperings
swept across the centuries. Choose
whatever your heart sings as your guide,
for it knows truths beyond what words
can tell. Trust what feels most loving.
The moments are here for your experiencing.
Drink of their nourishment deeply
and with joy, opening yourself
petal by wondrous petal.

The leaves fall to the creek floor
like careless drops from the brush of some artist.
splattering the rocks with rust and bronze,
pastel yellow and shades of green. They and the creek
make a painting of their own. But this is no accident.
There’s nothing careless here. It took eons
to create this scene, time beyond measure.
All for this moment, this one breath of a day,
when the light and the air were just so,
and it was early September.

All love goes beyond words.  
Some of it’s so deep you can’t even think it,
only feel it in your heart.  
And then there’s the love that’s made of
al the bits and crumbs of love there ever was.
Why, it’s so big that all it can do is paint itself
all over everything, right before your very eyes.

Sometimes I want to roll up my sleeves, step on into it
and hurl things, wailing in anguish and outrage.
I take note, you see, of what’s going on.

But it’s like the lyrics from that ‘60’s era tune,
either Moody Blues or the Beatles,
maybe you’ll know:
“Someone exploded a bomb today,
but it wasn’t anybody I knew.”

Another bomb? Too bad; so sad.
I take note and tuck it away.
The creek beckons. Trees are waiting
to be heard. Go now. Gifts await.
It will keep you sane.
And I did. And it does.

But as I said, I take note of what’s going on.
And from time to time I look beneath
the surface and am astonished at how vile
evil can be, what a cold and twisted thing
.
Then I remember the creek. And the trees.
And I am saved.

Finding themselves on rocky ground,
surrounded by the broken and the fallen,
in a place where the sun can find only
brief and narrow openings,
some spirits nonetheless thrive,
rejecting excuses for failing,
choosing instead to laugh and stand tall,
to shine their light, to blossom in love,
to sing the Yes of the infinite song
and live free. If you chance to see them,
let your heart applaud.

One by one, the leaves decide.
Who will go first? Who will hold on?
Who will be the last to go?
Already some could not resist
the chance to ride the wind
and fly, free of all restraints,
to sail birdlike on the wings of air.
Most waited, savoring the familiar view,
savoring its changes. Neither choice
was right or wrong. Time would tell them
when to fly. And time, the creek told them,
has its way of doing things
in exactly the perfect order.

A turn of the calendar’s page, and here’s September,
come to bridge the seasons, to provide a pathway
into fall. The green of the trees still sings of summer,
but the first of autumn’s leaves have begun to tumble
down, to gather at the edges of streams and roadways.
It happens like that, gradually, so that you hardly notice.
Beneath the bridge, time’s stream flows endlessly on.