Autumn has finally arrived...

Autumn has finally arrived in the Berkshires:  you can smell it in the air, see it in the trees and feel it as the cool wind washes across your face.  Autumn - beautiful and sad - bright reds and yellows holding the promise of death and darkness.  I visited with a sweet man this morning - once an international corporate leader and now stunned by grief as he says good by to the one he loved for over 50 years - and we all wept.

Autumn and grief are so unpredictable, yes?  One moment it is hot and humid and then... bam! Cool and grey with stunning colors pointing towards emptiness.  Made me think of Mary Oliver's poem:  Heart Poem.

My heart, that used to pump along so pleasantly,
has come now to a different sort of music.

There is someone inside those red walls, irritated
and even, occasionally, irrational.

Years ago I was part of an orchestra; our conductor
was a wild man. He was forever rapping the music-
stand for silence. Then he would call out some
correction and we would begin again.

Now again it is the wild man.

I remember the music shattering and our desperate
attentiveness.

Once he flung the baton over our heads and into
the midst of the players.  It flew over the violins
and landed next to a bass fiddle. It flopped to the
floor. What silence! Then someone picked it up
and it was passed forward back to him. He rapped
the stand and raised his arms. Then we all breathed
again, and the music started.

I feel that today: the silence, the wild man. I'm waiting to breathe again and for the music, too.