Shouldn't…but Do

The tree in front of me is tall, but young.  A maple, with drifts of chartreuse leaves shifting and fluttering on the breeze.  Opposite, another maple, orange red, lifting, breathing.  An intimate, soulful, autumnal room.

By nature I am a springtime gal – inquisitive, alert for the novel, how things grow, a million starts, the skipping glory of old ideas grown new.

But never has the beauty, the whispering decay of autumn been so affecting.  As vibrant, as energetic as spring, but mellowed with age.   Bright spring colour replaced by deeper shades, deeper thoughts.  Weathered resilience.

Am I alone in thinking leaves know their way? An invisible thread leads each on its path.  To twirl among falling leaves, to partake in a thousand stories.

I sit before that landscape now.  Deciduous forest, carpet of colour, vertical, textured grey-brown trunks.  Shssssssh, Shsssssssh, omnipresent wind animates the place entirely.

Pneuma, spiritos.  Were I a mystic, I would laugh aloud, clap once and say I am the world I see.  I swallowed it years ago and it feeds me still.

But I am not.  And so I twirl through these woods, with the leaves, with the threads – the profound beauty of decline.