Harbinger

Do you feel that?

As I walked home this morning, my footsteps were overtaken by the scuttling of escaped leaves and spiraling seedpods riding the lip of the wind along the street.

I think my squirrel-mind has been anticipating -
storing-up, and hoarding -
comforts and securities, sensing
both an end of summer
and a dread of winter-coming.

But, perhaps out of a sense of enough stability,
I remember to pick my head up.
It will all be ok.

I have been seeing:
events and people colored with a familiarity that leads me forward.

I pick my head up, remembering that this scent of air is the apprentice September preparing the trees for that artist October. That memory brings the life from my feet into my neck, and I look up to observe the entire ritual.

Do you feel it in the wind? Do you smell that?
It is change. The Change brings death. These are exciting times. The leaves scurry along the ground.

Last week, I realized with dread that sense of end-of-summer, and the heaviness of the impending, long darkness of winter. It was not until a few long moments later that I remembered that between winter and summer comes fall.



Fall, and the brilliant golds, scarlets, oranges of fading emerald leaves - and the sky is colored with the same bone-drying winds that crisped the apples.



It is a time for opening of doors and windows. Secured indoors, I cannot feel the breeze or smell the wind, and feel an curious apprehension that I will not notice the piper passing by, but will be trapped by continuing to go about my business. No, that must not happen. Throw open the doors and windows.


In the moving air, can you taste that?

These are exciting times: it is a far-off death. It moves through the house and cleans the air. It is a salt to draw out the flavor of living. In the company of September and approach of October, in the anxious tugging of the breeze by leaves the color of tea, summer departs and I am reminded of a vivid obligation to live.


It's the spring-time of my life