SMELL THE CHANGING AS IT BURNS

I can smell the changing season as it burns upon the gathering mounds of leaves that have fallen to their death and nearly decompose before being collected by the collectors and put on the pyre… an offering made which they know not of, will never comprehend, nor willingly participate.

I can feel the air changing; putting on her finest mist and fog to enchant us upon her entering in… the specter winds her way around and around, never touching the ground but in her wake she leaves the frost, like breadcrumbs for those who are lost, so they may follow her into her season.

I can taste her breath; the sweet rotting soul of her breath. She breathes in and out, in and out, and the night creatures answer her in their own way – howling, cawing, hooting, the chattering of reeds, fronds, tall grasses that speak to her and kiss her feet as she passes o’er.

I can hear her calling my name outside the window pane as she makes her way pass’d and I recognize her voice, the longing I’ve known, that unbearable scream to be heard; simply noticed… and her cry – her lonesome wailing… I would gladly walk with her but she has commanded me stay.

I cannot see the changing but I can see the after effects – the blood red leaves intertwined with the oozing plasma of the yellow leaves and dried up skin of the browns.  I can see the trees wearing nothing more than their bones and they rattle them in protest against the changing.

The sky hangs lower and lower, becomes grayer and grayer, and I think that if I reached my hand out, stretched to my limit, I may be able to touch it… 

I know; the blessing of knowing, understanding, comprehending it all. I can see it unfold before it’s unfolding, I can hear it speaking before the sound is made; I can taste it without ever opening my mouth…

I know; the curse that it is, always in front of me, ever distracting me from my purpose, the voices speaking in ways I am not familiar – yet I understand.  The watercolor photographs I see of places I have yet to go, the feeling of something so deeply consuming that I am keenly aware of the joy and the fear simultaneously – and yet, I have not moved a single muscle, made any attempt to ponder such a thing, nor accepted it with certainty.

The knowing is always there – in what I see, hear, taste, smell, touch and in what goes unseen, unheard, untasted, odorless and without physical being.  It is my companion and always has been.  Surely a love/hate relationship… and I have long abandoned the fight.  It is a part of me.

Autumn is now upon us and I know things – great things, are approaching. I am told I am ready, so I trust.  I am told that all will be well, so I trust.  I am reassured that all is as it should be, so I trust.  

And now I wonder – when will I see winter?

M Teresa Clayton