By Wayne Allensworth
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour…
The child’s toys and the old man’s reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
A survey of October skies. As I walk and watch and experience the change of seasons, however gradual in this part of the world. But still there, still noticeable, still pleasant. A shift in the sky and the sun is not as bright, the warmth soothing and not burning as in the heat of a summer afternoon. Fall days. In the mornings, the sky has more shadows, and the silhouettes of the trees are longer, like a cloak that has been released from the firmament. Even the morning stillness seems more still. The silence more silent. I stand behind an oak and look through the forked branches at a morning brightness framed by the tree. Not diminished, but heightened by being partly cloaked, partly hidden.
In my youth, summer was my time. I needed the brightness and the heat. It rejuvenated me in a way I can’t explain. I have grown fonder of fall and hazy autumn skies and watching the leaves on the trees rustle and shimmer in a hooded sunlight. They move like birds that perch on them and shimmer, catching my eye. The stars of the morning. A tall blue heron walks on his stilted legs, watching the water of the stream and the pond. I see him each morning and he pays little attention to me. The heron goes about his business, one more wondrous being that is part of a whole. As am I.
I remember. The people I have lost, but who still live in memory and, I believe, on some other plane. For the past is never really past and the people and places I knew are as real and ever present as the glowing harvest moon. James Joyce once wrote of the deceased who remain ever present. He likened their memories to snowflakes falling, ever falling.
The snow was falling, too, on every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried…His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
I’ll wait for winter like the author of September Song, spending the precious remaining days with my loved ones:
But it’s a long, long while from May to December
And the days grow short when you reach September
And the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
And I haven’t got time for waiting game
And the days turn to gold as they grow few
September, November
And these few golden days I’d spend with you
These golden days I’d spend with you
As September slipped away and the October skies set my mind to other fall days and nights, I recall that Kurt Weill once set the words of poet Maxwell Anderson to music. My favorite musical rendition of September Song echoes in my mind on the fall nights as I watch the skies and wait.
Fall nights. I remember the football games, the marching band playing, the cool air and school dances. Homecoming. Yards decorated with pumpkins. And faded summer tan lines. At night I walk the trail and see a glowing harvest moon hanging in the sky. And on my street, as I turn off the trail, I see that tall blue heron perched on a roof top. He glides down and lands in front of me. Watching. I walk by him and he struts into a neighbor’s yard and eyes me. The streetlights are yellowish, casting a glow that reveal patches of the night. Shadowy clouds float above me. At night, I can see the depth of what is before me in a way that is deeper than in daylight.
Where did the time go? In the spring and summer, I watched magnificent harriers floating in the China blue sky. I watched them whirl and twirl and spin as they played with one another. I watched for them every morning and I often found them perching on the tops of tree branches that swayed ever so gently in the breeze. And then they were gone. Migrating further south, perhaps. I hope to see them again sometime in the spring.
Like those great birds, time moves on. And people, too. But I have faith that the greatest migration is yet to come for those of us who remain. Time as motion and change. So don’t wonder where it goes. It’s always moving, but always there. A flow. Be patient as Nina Simone introduces and sings Who Knows Where the Time Goes?
As in the song, I do not fear time. I have no thoughts of leaving. Not yet. The autumn of life isn’t over yet. And as winter approaches, I don’t feel the cold. I embrace time, knowing that perhaps what I’ve learned and have yet still to learn is the fulfillment of the flow of time itself. Learning to see eternity in an hour’s time. Infinity in the palm of your hand. Time is alive, as Nina Simone seemed to think. The great task of life that culminates in old age is to acquire wisdom. I’ve often wondered whether what one learns, the experiences one has had, can really be conveyed to others. And like so many things the answer is both “yes” and “no.” I can’t quite convey to others the experience of a personal epiphany or even of a fall morning in its fullness. Words, not even the songs of poets, can quite get there, but they can point the way. So, I’ll try to live in such a way that makes an example if anyone is disposed to see it. Living can be poetry in motion. And that’s what creation is. A great poetic unfolding. God is an artist. A poet. May our lives be living stanzas in the great epic.
I leave you with another favorite of mine, the incomparable Eva Cassidy singing Autumn Leaves.
Chronicles contributor Wayne Allensworth is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood. For thirty-two years, he worked as an analyst and Russia area expert in the US intelligence community.
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