Not Hungry for Fables

leaves in October
stained glass light
falling for it every time

Days now rust. Suddenly, everything is papered with wet leaves and pine needles. A bulge in the sky brings it all down more quickly than expected. Dampness is the mode for a while. In early morning darkness I leave for the gym and everything and everyone is so quiet at this hour that I forget they exist. I can hear the sound of my tires on the wet road.

The gym is a manifestation of both turmoil and healing for my mind-body. To move and push the limits of embodied incarnation creates an elopement from constant, everyday trap of chronic pain. A new path veers, but from a distance, one can now see how all trails lead to the same place. Returning, I walk the dog with a flashlight – not so we can see but so others can see us.

The smell of wet pine and rain-downed leaves reminds me that for two nights in a row, I didn't crawl through dark. No longer is there a need to feed me fables – things are gained between a rock and a hard place.

Fields turn fallow and fewer birds stop to feed. Soon it will all be floured two feet deep with ice and snow. Rain carries the smell of fish inland from the big lake. One is not so sure weather and landscape needs to be forged into words. Like this sentence. These and other disguises so nobly donned this time of year.

And yet, it is in the radiance of falling light, bent against trees and softened through the miracle of a grass-blade, that we are reminded of the Lover. It is They who unbind the truth of how we cannot save ourselves.