today’s crisp bouquet
cinnamon and pumpkin pie
upon the mountain
forest green and yellow gold
fall has come to be again

I am not dead, you know, but asleep,
I may lay here silently still; I played
On a branch, watching above, now
Waiting for re-birth; I am unafraid.

I will lose the colour of living, but
Still my body does feed the earth.
I will live to give this tree its life,
That bore me into life cycle’s birth.

Be not afraid, for your life will end
Here, in one sense, it must leave.
As it arrives to where it’s going, know,
Love also begins where it ends; receive.

S. Diane Trollope …Spiritual Motion

Death having done its worst
you lie in crimson splendor
stark in contrast with a world
that cannot make sense
and so we struggle
and so we stare
at you, made beautiful in death
hoping that death was
not cruel, but merely sudden

I fall down to the ground
Unable to rise again
And no desire
To climb back up.

Breath of wind carries me
To all of the places
That I am meant to see.

Coming to rest in the solidity
Of what I can not know
Dissolving into what is.
And shining.
Just shining.

Would I have even noticed you
if you had lain there in the drift
of leaves all red and orange and gold
just another vivid token
an ordinary miracle
trampled under foot?

How can it be that you,
separated and fallen from your source of life
can be so exquisite in your dying?

What is the measure of your worth by now?
Too old, beyond your chlorophyll bearing days
no longer exhaling oxygen and gulping CO2
or providing cooling shade,
is your only future the bonfire or the yard bag?
Will you now contribute to the carbon footprint
you reduced when you were truly ‘green’?

Maybe in the best scenario someone’s livelihood
will be to sweep you up to make you into mulch and
spread you on the garden beds. Or that a child will marvel at you,
choose and give you (gift you are!) to someone dear.

Until then, my brilliant friend, nothing is left for you to do
but to delight the eye.

My bones know the turning,
the swing of this old Earth as days
grow shorter, and they wait
in a new land where the oaks,
festooned with Christmas balls
of dusky blue go on
as if time stood still, heat
still dewing the brow as noon
creeps on toward summer, unaware
that winter lives in another place.

The bright shocking red to hold
as a talisman against the coming dark
fades to unreality and bird call
outside my window brings its own shock
in a place where there is no need
to flee South, or beneath the rich
black soil, wet with the last tears
of summer. For all is warm, and dry
forever and ever and we might forget
that anywhere else exists, or that time
spins on without us here where autumn
comes shyly, and gently, if at all.

Your own words of wisdom last week felt like a poem to me… so here it is. Is this cheating?

No Emptiness in Letting Go

The heart of autumn’s gifts
are its twin energies
of relinquishing
and harvesting.

It is a season of paradox
that invites us to consider
what we are called
to release and surrender.

At the same time, it invites us
to gather in the harvest,
to name and celebrate the fruits
of the seeds we planted months ago.

In holding these two in tension,
we are reminded that
in our letting go
we also find abundance.

By Christine!
Submitted by Pam (my title)