Last night, as my husband and I walked the dogs in the rapidly advancing autumn dusk, the finger-nail-moon shone bright against the canvas of a sharply clear and chilly night.
The sky was a shawl thrown around the shoulders of the earth in darkening hues of indigo with a streak of the palest yellow on the edge where the night and the ground grazed each other.
It was breathtaking.
Finding beauty in the things of fall isn't hard and it fills my heart with a glee that surprises me.
That's because the beauty of fall things is bittersweet, like the birds that begin their flocking exercises so they can be ready to hit their aerial roads before the cold arrives, in search of warmer temperatures to the south.
Each time the birds paint their figure-eights in the sky, like miniature black kittens chasing an indiscernible toy around, winter becomes more of a looming certainty and less of an unpleasant memory.
I saw a robin recently and prayed that my robin, whom I have not seen for most of this late summer, takes off early for more temperate climes so I don't have to agonize over him once again.
This year, I'm going to try the approach of a fellow Puerto Rican colleague at my small college, who told me how she changed her psychic approach to winter.
"I used to be afraid of the cold in winter," she told me recently, in all seriousness. "But I decided to change my attitude and to appreciate the beauty of light on snow and of its texture and of the bare trees against a cloudless sky."
I know well the wisdom of realizing that while we can't change some things that happen or how some people treat us, we do have the power to change our attitude and our response toward such things. But I also know that it's always easier to tell others how to do this, than to do it ourselves.
Still, as I continue to enjoy the beauty in fall things, like the way the sun shifts and instead of the abrasive, roasting fire of August, it becomes the pleasant shimmering light of mid-September, dappling the trees with sparkles, I will attempt to aplicarme el cuento so that I don't end up predicando la moral en calzoncillos.
This year, I plan to work at finding the beauty in all things, even in the approaching winter.
3 comments:
Bello escrito, eres una poeta de nacimiento.
Esa sabiduría de aceptar lo que nos depara la vida es lo único que se puede describir como felicidad.
I was really startled last year when I realized that I liked the trees near the officehouse better with their leaves off than on. There's something about being able to see all of their silhouettes that I do love.
Your mother is right: you are a born poet.
You, and my mother, are too kind. :)
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