Autumnal

Reading Thoreau to the ticking of one’s body clock, until a visitor, upon entering the room, is as likely to find a cricket in the chair as someone with a book in his lap — that’s how it is.

Earlier this afternoon, a hummingbird kept returning to the front window to feed on her reflection.

As I read the season, I see now that in the earliest chapters, many clues were given as to the kind of summer it has been. In the garden, the tomato plants especially, seem to have known all along that there would be less time to ripen their crop. Although much of the fruit remains, the plants, so rugged and vigorous during the growing stage, look now as if it were late-September. Meanwhile, the flavor of what we have picked thus far — we have six varieties this year — is like a dream.

I no longer have anything to sell. That I once offered as merchandise what was always in my heart to give, is revealing enough of the strange road I have traveled.

August 16, 2019

Autumnal

Bath, a meditation

sky, a womb

rain, a celebration

flight, a tune

mind, a constellation

heart, a room

life, a revelation

death, a broom

Recently Banned Literature, September 23, 2014

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