Reddening

The trees in the park recognise incipient autumn. Leaves redden like iron once bright from the forge and now cooling on the floor. It's a colour that comes after the glory of action, whether riding the green hills or beating upon the anvil. It's the red of slow acceptance that activity is over, harbinger of dormancy. But woe betide anyone who steps on that piece of iron.

After words like that, I feel like quoting from Mary Oliver. So I shall:

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - - - how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

Momentary pastures, iron briefly hot, short rides that soon are over, the redundancy of pottering about waiting to heal.

Living for what is now: long days or seasonal colours; riding or the opportunity to think. Indeed gratitude for new speakers for my computer and all eleven series of M*A*S*H to watch on dark evenings.

Autumn has scarcely begun. With good fortune I'll be fit in time to ride out and see the beech woods in all their bright varied seasonal beauty.

Comments

[Shirley]

Patience, patience. Hope you are healing well.

[White Horse Pilgrim]

Yes, patience, which comes to me but sparingly. I have to keep working on that virtue.