The wind blusters this morning in 30 to 40 mile-per-hour gusts, and leaves scuttle down streets like hurried pedestrians on New York City’s sidewalks. I run with the wind to my back, which pushes me faster than I want to go at times and I almost lose my footing in blasts of wind, but when I turn the opposite direction, I feel as though I am running up another steep hill, the wind pushing my shoulders back.
The gardens I have admired have died off, their harvest gathered. Lush plants of corn are now dry, dead stalks, and pole bean, tomato, and pepper plants have made way for dirt. Splotches of rotting fruit become mulching loam.
Migrating flocks lift off from trees. Their collective flapping wings sound like nickering horses.
Stubborn leaves dangle from branches like windows separated from a wall, although most take flight in the strong breeze, sounding like water pouring from rain gutters.
Insects seek warmth indoors on chilly nights, and spiders wander inside and scramble in place, attempting to escape up the slippery sides of white tubs.
Bare branches reveal the secret work of trees during summer.
Startled, I peer deeply into the branched desolate that branches, and branches yet again, and I see the fully formed, prepackaged buds of next Spring’s leaves and flowers, like hibernating bats. It is November. Cold and wind are stripping trees of their leaves, and yet throughout desolate, cold, and wind, Spring buds are silently real, very present.
Another place of pause in this journey.
Trees’ Spring buds. Present throughout Autumn to Winter’s seasons of cold…no avoiding that…biding their time. Eventually and in various stages, the aspens, maples, and oaks will awaken, begin to draw light and water into their tissues once again.
In time.
In the right time, they will open, like moths from cocoons in a Spring eclosion ceremony.
Their own ritual of forbearance.
GL, 11/6/2009. Prevail.
Seasons. I love the way you travel them. Looking for all that is there for you. A rich life indeed.
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