The shift of seasons hallows me as a river might clear a stone, washing away excess and pretense, preparing me for seasons yet to come. It is an in-between and unknown place, this Washing. Laying me as bare as the the trees of November, helping me to see what lies below the surface of my many distractions. To hear beyond the current noise, to the core of me.

The mist moves in tonight, foretelling a shift to warmer weather, for a time, before the winter winds return.
The birches and maples have surrendered their leaves, standing bare; the oaks and beeches have just begun the same process, with the leaves floating through the air from the overstory, drifting and landing gracefully on my garden. I can not pretend, I won't miss your company, dear leaves that make me laugh, that greet me on a warm evening as I return home. It reminds me of how I miss you. I know we will have other gatherings, the trees and I.
Still, it is a bitter sweetness, this shift in which I participate.

The wind helps the trees to surrender. It helps me too: the stripping down, the baring, the uncovering. It helps me sit with all that lies below, all this resides beneath the surface of my narratives, below the busy-ness of my life.

This is a powerful place to which I surrender. The process of peeling back is indeed uncomfortable, and necessary. It helps me to root in deeper truths of my being, before I may bloom again, in a different season. There is grief here, as I release this debris to the stream of the wind. Yet, as Leah whitehorse wrote so beautifully, "Grief is love, dipped in tears."

Yes, here, in this laying bare, my love and my missing of you mingle equally.

So in honor of you, I will make a bouquet from the seasoned blossoms, and bring it into my home, leaving it here on my hearth, through this season and the next, reminding me of you and your loveliness, infusing my heart with your wisdom, allowing my soul to move with the beauty of the eternal you.

Sending love on the winds of time, these winds that can move beyond all time to you.

For all of this, I offer a photo montage of places where the eternal resides. And I offer my love.