The Moody Side of Autumn Beauty

 

Before the magic show of turning leaves, autumn days have a soft foreboding quality that I find beautiful. The last roses bloom pale and their petals will drop soon. Full round pumpkins have hard shells to insulate against the coming chill. Preservation. Harvest. Gathering in.

It seems like we have so many seasons when we are young but as we age I’ve come to understand that the reason seasons repeat so continuously without variation is that the lesson to be learned is hard. Things change. Bodies change. Relationships change. All that is mortal  is impermanent. If you are very, very blessed, you have stumbled upon what endures. I hope you have.

I took these shots at the Arboretum yesterday, where I laughed and felt lighthearted with my husband and daughter-in-law Hayley. Only later did it occur to me how somber the photos are that I took. Perhaps it is because I walked here so many times with my baby, with a group of small school children, with my husband when we were younger and newly in love. That’s the seasons; all that has passed. Our family, though it looks quite different, is still here. And the same gaiety I felt as a child myself at  mums and pumpkins and twilight.

                                                         

Irises, wet with rain

When I see the white irises open with their petals freshly anointed in raindrops, and the sun peaking into my grey world with it's warm touch, I can't help but think that my life is echoed and repeated everywhere. Didn't we just flare up in tempers and drama, like a thunderstorm? And haven't we all hugged and talked and made our peace with each other, and basked in the warmth of familial love once again?

I think of these analogies, and remember that there is also a literal and rational interconnectedness of all life forms. I think scientists are just now catching up to what poets know.

"I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves–we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each others' destiny."

-Mary Oliver, Winter Hours

to celebrate Earth Day

There are Earth Day celebrations everywhere I go. I love living at a time when people are coming together to understand, celebrate, and protect the interconnectedness of each precious life on planet Earth. Here are some of the most wonderful photographers I've found recently. Each honors the life around them by their precise attention. And the last is an excerpt from the poetry diva Mary Oliver.

Enjoy!

by Milemarker

by Everyday Moments

by Gary Heller Photography

From Mary Oliver, the Summer Day:

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Morning Poem

The first thing I do in the morning is look out my window at the sun rising over the mountains. I drink in this gorgeousness. And for a few moments it feels to me that the natural world is a sacred gift, and that each new day has limitless possibilities. I let my intentions soar out to join the first illumination of the world I live in. This is the way I know to be happy.

Here is Mary Oliver, saying what I would say, if I were a poet as well as a potter:

Morning Poem by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

from Dream Work (1986) by Mary Oliver