October Casts Spells

October has its own light – golden in dawn – brisk and blue at midday.

In an overflow spot connected to the creek, water bugs drift in a circle. I am hypnotized in a way that is different than flower-watching. October casts spells. A few leaves and many acorns begin to reorder the sketch of land I borrow. I remember staring over the Sappic cliffs in August, knowing plainly why they call it a lover's leap. A wrist-thick rope held me back in some ways, also saving me against my will.

Early morning woodsmoke carries the senses upward from glittering roofs as a reminder of deities honored in the burning of certain woods. Consider the birch. In some Irish traditions, household fires are doused and relit from a central Yule fire made of birch. A broom is made of birch twigs and used to brush out the dust of the old year. A determined energy, a pureness, emanates from this wood. It is one of the first to present leaves in the spring and one of the first to grow back when an area of woodland has been cleared. Regeneration; rebirth; tenacity. Rise.

Thomas McGrath wrote a little poem about how water might be in love with fire, but not with the last of the winter ice, and I can't get it out of my head. An affinity for water is as oxygen, and the way I burn has everything to do with the incense of wood. And the poem may not have anything to do with that but somehow it kinda does.

breaking through morning
webs before seeing –
bridges disappear
as horizons gather and release
dawn

Season by season, I am moored and unmoored, traveling only as far as I can while yet keeping home in my sights.