The other day in the woods along the river between Scorpio and Sagittarius, I found everything in disarray, between glory and dissolution.
Most of the branches were bare, but between fullness and emptiness, I was attracted to that incompletion, allusive remnants of sycamores and honeysuckles.
Suddenly visible trunks, almost immodestly revealed, were promises budded for the purity of winter's undress.
I walked through a sweet disorder of fallen leaves, beside isolated remainders of summer that were quivering in the warm late autumn wind.
I witnessed a reversal of order or a new order: leaves out of line, phalanxes of leaves now twisted and mismatched, no longer alternate or opposite, no longer clinging or stemmed in rows.
There were empty spaces in the canopy which memory could not quite reconstruct, sequences ripped apart, sizes altered, no longer leaf clones in rows.
But, too, all things seemed acceptable, and nothing was out of place, Everything belonged in the final seeding and mulching and gathering. There was a simple leveling of the magnificent and the commonplace: bright and glowing April green, the fruit of July, October flamboyance: all embraced and reshaped.
The sky, open through the high trees, increased the power of the remaining leaves uncovering a great maculation, new dapples and speckles, patches, flecks, spotted and stained.
Along the streams and the river, low from the drought of October, the year's treasure was assembles in islands of fallen foliage, new collection that created new fractal geographies, new soft, wet beaches.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the fourth week off Late Fall. In the meantime, walk between Scorpio and Sagittarius, find the magic.
Poor Will's Almanack for 2023 as well as my new book of essays, The Virgin Point: Meditations in Nature, are now, available on Amazon or from www.poorwillsalmanack.com.
