Can you hear the silence of the last leaves falling? If the wind blows a certain way, I start feeling desperate that I will miss the last one fall. I feel something watching that happen. It’s the one time a year where I don’t feel so small in this world. It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
Before this world aged me, I used to love putting my boots on and going out to crunch every single acorn and leaf. The sound awakened something in me that is closest I have ever come to true joy. Now, I just stare at them. Yesterday, I was driving down the road with the window down and one actually fell and came in the window and hit me in the side of the head so hard, that it sent a shock through my head and caused my ear to ring. I guess even the acorns have turned on me. And it didn’t help this 2 week headache I am carrying.
The kid in me is gone. Is this how it happens to every adult? I always promised myself that I would never let that happen to me. My goofiness and kid-like nature was the thing that was a part of me. Making people laugh was a genuine part of my spirit. However, my spirit is ghost-like now and it really is true that the people that are the goofiest and who make everyone else laugh and happy, are the ones who are suffering the most.
The air is crisp and and I sit at night and wonder to myself about where all the creatures and critters have gone. Where do they go to cozy up during the falling of fall? And the next thing I wonder is if I can go there too? I mean just really listen at night. Not a peep. Just the quiet of the night and I like to imagine that every single creature is deep in a hole with the greatest fire going. They are roasting marshmallows and laughing with their fellow creatures, making plans for next spring and summer. Hashing out territories like a town hall meeting.
Every so often, the sun peeks through the clouds as if the sky is also in talks with the wind. They weigh their time out perfectly so it flows like a beautiful painting. And then at the end of the day, the sun tips its hat to the moon as they pass in the horizon and another day is done. They work in such unison. But people….people can’t seem to manage that. Imagine the beauty that would be if they could. Still, I just stare at the beauty that is the completion of another successful day that nature offered me. Front row seats to the most gorgeous display I have ever witnessed.
Nighttime is even more beautiful. There are creatures that come out and take the night-watch. They are the sires that rule the night, hunting, continuing on life’s plan keeping an exact rule into this great big world. If you listen closely, you can hear the mama coyotes call out to their young at night, and then listen further and you’ll hear all the babies barking back. You will hear that until at last, they are together again, running the same path in the night. Everything flows so smoothly and it’s kismet.
Yet, here we sit, enjoying it and feeling the most somber things this world can offer. How often we take advantage of the healing all around us. Creatures who don’t slow down just because the world is hunting them. They just keep grazing and hope that another day is offered up to them. We are selfish creatures. The most selfish on the planet. Because no matter the beauty around us, we stop dead in our tracks with heartbreak and trials. We let sadness and hopelessness drag us down at the drop of the first leaf. We are not deserving of the top of the food chain. We deserve to be hunted one by one as something else’s dinner.
We chop the tree down that offers us oxygen. We eat the meat that grazes our lands. We spray poison in place of the creature that may very well eat the critter or plant that will poison us.
This Earth is spinning backwards. And that is why we somehow ended up on top. That has to be why. Maybe the orbit can change and knock about and we can finally spin the way we deserve. These leaves fall around me, and I soak the cold into my very bones. I try not to wither with them. I want to freeze them in place like a permanent resin in nature so that I can savor the moment that I realized that I don’t just feel small, I am small. After all, there’s a great big world out there that doesn’t care about my broken heart. It doesn’t care about the desperate ways I am clinging on to anything that can show me glory. That can show me grace. I am not sufficient enough to show it to myself.
So crunch, crunch, crunch on the acorn
and grab onto the last of the thorns
Make eye contact with the deer through the brush
And stay still so they don’t scatter in a rush
Sit with the moon at night in the bone-chilling cold
And embrace ever shiver as each day I grow old
Run with the wolves hoping instead of being a meal
We could join forces and strike a mother-nature deal
I’ll strip naked and grow fur
Run with the best of them, leave this human form in the blur
Roll around under the night sky
The moon will recharge me and dry the tears that fall from just the one eye
I’ll howl and howl until I am healed from this pain
And the trees will provide me shelter when at last here comes the cold rain
I will lay down one last time, as the sun it begins to rise
As the life before me and behind me, all at once, finally dies…..
The Truth and the Lies of the Journey 