09.24.15  First off, I thought I had missed it, thinking it arrived on September 22nd.  Then, I realized early in the morning yesterday, that this was the day!  And what a day it was!  I was like a puppy chasing its tail.  I took photos on the dock at dawn of yellow leaves reflected in the water.  I took photos of the sunshine illuminating the pumpkin on the steps.  i took shots of moored boats in Somers Bay harbour and drove along a country road to capture a sailboat, bobbing on the lake which was sparkling with diamonds, out beyond the golden reeds and red leaves.  Late in the afternoon, I walked the river trail close to home, focusing my lens on the beautiful blue of the Swan River in the Fall, thinking of all the ways I might be able to create that hue with watercolors.  Finally, at sunset, exhausted from greediness, and scrambling for traction on the first day of a new season, I sat on a red chair on the dock, and watched the sun disappear, officially closing down summer.  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

And, in the dark, with the color washed from the sky, I read Mary Oliver, who always settles me down at times like this.

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends
into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing, as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say
it’s easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.