10.26.17

We are off, on our trip to Oregon and a cottage by the sea.  It will be November upon our return, the time will have changed, and darkness will descend even sooner at the end of the shortening day.   The leaves will all be gone from these trees, replaced by the sparseness of November.  Yet, October did not disappoint–it was grand.

The days may not be so bright and balmy—yet the quiet and melancholy that linger around them is fraught with glory. Over everything connected with autumn there lingers some golden spell—some unseen influence that penetrates the soul with its mysterious power. ~Northern Advocate

October is all about beauty and loss in the same moment, and it’s too much heartache to sustain that “golden spell” forever.   As Mary Oliver writes, “So let us go on…and the ponds be cold and black.” There’s an old saying that “sailors come home from the sea at the end of October”.  There comes that time for hunkering down, settling in, being quiet in the dark.  But, not quite yet, as we drive away in sunshine, and the glow of golden Tamaracks on the mountains to our west, saying goodbye to October.

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness–Mary Oliver

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.