What the wind brings

The wind is a solid force blasting up from the south, rattling the beaded hem on the shades in our living room, knocking framed pictures off end tables, keeping up a steady clangor on the wind chimes, never letting them even catch their breath. All day the wind blows hard as it did yesterday and the day before and the day before that, too. Sometimes at twilight the wind slows to pause, as when you take in a deep breath, and then in the pallid moonlit darkness, releases a breeze that rouses the chimes and the sleepers from their slumber.

What most of us think of as summer is nearly over and I am not ready for the change, for the approach of autumn. This is due in part to the chores that need to be done before winter. Now I have to try to crowd them into shorter days and soon real autumn will appear and then I will have the autumn things to do as well. It is like this nearly every year and at some point I look out at the yellowing grass bowing before the wind and wonder what I will give up, what chore will remain undone and perhaps reflect on the relative value and importance we put on things. Somehow the choices we make are all so arbitrary. Combine this with the fleeting nature of our lives and what do you have in the end? Nothing; the impermance of life is what we have.

It is easy at this time of year to think of cycles, of seasons, of the recurrence of things just like last year and the years before. The smaller details change; what comes to fruition in the garden, what fills the freezer and what we put into jars to get us through the winter and spring till late next summer when the empty jars wait for what we receive as a gifts of living. The details change but the life, the living goes on. We choose what we put into the jars to get us through winter. Likewise we choose what we put into our lives to get us through the days and weeks and years.

The wind continues to blow as if its' very life depended on never ceasing
and the crickets saw their legs back and forth, back and forth.
From the kitchen the warm smell of bread baking flows back against the tide of wind
whistling in through the screens
sounding like a foretaste of winter.
The green hummers chirp and dart headlong into the gusts
landing on the swaying feeder. I wonder
if they know about tomorrow
or migration or just the emptiness of the belly?

Peace and love to you all,
Mike