Wabi-Sabi Autumn

Wabi-Sabi Autumn

Inspired by Whispered Images: Photographs in the Aesthetic of Wabi-Sabi, by Eric Somers, http://www.sandbookstudio.com/photo.html

I notice, this October, skittering shadows

of the brittle leaves that drop from

sycamores in autumn, and I wonder if

the trees shed now-unnecessary foliage

to make compost while they sleep –

protection through the winter,

nourishment in spring for them and their

companions and dependents, birds and

bugs and shrubbery that needs their

shade.

There is along my path an ailing maple,

all except a few limbs bare, but those in

crimson glory, unaware (or, if they

know, not caring) that their brother-

sister branches lack the wherewithal to

bud, the sap too sluggish (or it might be

absent altogether) to remind the naked

branches of their foliating habit when

the air warms and the earth unhardens.

Once I would have grieved or fretted:

What atrocity, what human meddling,

has been visited upon this innocently

thriving urban flora specimen? Today, in

mid-October, I rejoice at the

phenomenon – nature acting naturally

regardless of the stimulus.

Not so long ago I dreaded winter – a

colossal inconvenience and a fearsome

obstacle to my frenetic busyness, to my

insistence that I float from here to there

on friendly breezes, not get bitten by a

north wind that must certainly be vicious

or at least dispassionate to

(unprovoked!) attack a lone pedestrian.

Indeed I took it personally and let it

hinder my activity, when all I really

needed was another sweater and a hat

or else, perhaps, a day of rest and

meditation and of making soup from

scraps of chicken and the half a spinach

salad loosely wrapped in cellophane 

and almost past its fresh-till date.

The grass is showing weariness, and who

can blame it, being hacked and raked

and sprayed at rigid intervals all

summer? But it doesn’t strive, it just

adapts, accepting change according to its

habit. After all, the sun has not retired; it

is only at a greater distance from the

planet than in April, say, or August. It

comes back, requiring none of my

assistance. If I fancy there’s a cosmic

knowing nature has that dormancy is

preparation, I can rest contentedly in

what I sense as temporary, as a time of

restoration, not the end of summers, not

the death of light.

Before the groves and gardens sleep

vintagelaceandlavender.blogspot.com

THE MORNING GLORY AND THE ROSE

What if, in spite of an untimely freeze, the morning glory opened early to the sun as she does customarily, never mind the chill at midnight, heedless of the wintry sting at five or six o’clock a.m.? Dawn catches her unfurling eagerly to drink the first fresh pink and orange beams, the sweetest in their purity. Some will think her reckless; she knows better, as do we.

Elsewhere in the garden there are blossoms reticent to show themselves for dread of frostbite, wrapped in all their fragile petal layers, holding tightly to them for protection. Nature, I suppose, possesses wisdom and experience beyond my own; she knows what she’s about.

The rose, perhaps, must cautiously keep watch, his vulnerable core intolerant of icy blasts late in the season. He would ask the April air to mitigate itself in ways felicitous to roses, thus assuredly to demonstrate his gorgeous geometrical array in safety come mid-May. All well and good, I say, for roses.

I would rather imitate the morning glory, braving every sort of wind to hear the stories each arrives relating from the corners of the earth by way of raucous shouting or of sibilance; besides, her beauty is the kind that shows to best advantage when in motion, nodding, tossing, spinning with her sisters in a feral dance that might caress the grass or reach aspiring to the sky.

At last, if I were she, happily would I draw back as shadows lengthen, sagging in the heaviness of afternoon. She makes a virtue of necessity, giving place to let the rose command attention in the quiet of a summer evening, when the wind’s remaining energy ascends in gentle currents to the canopy; it loves to tease the drowsy cottonwood and maple leaves before the groves and gardens sleep.

Then the morning glory -- blissfully exhausted and perhaps, if flowers are at all contemplative, a little pensive -- lets her bright blue dress go limp and drab and, in her self-imposed seclusion inconspicuous, collapses gratefully and rests, the better to embrace tomorrow for all the difference it makes.

----------------------------

This week on eBay, save on Annagrammatica's Little Book of Positive Affirmations --

single copy or set of five

Find Annagrammatica's Affirmation of the Day on Facebook. If you like my page, please LIKE my page. Thank you.