Holding on, but less tightly
Autumn, to me, is a time of grasping.
Everything seems to be sharper, clearer, more potent as we transition to shorter days, darker skies. The trees on the street where I live are baring their silhouettes, loosened of their riot of leaves. When the rain finally relents, the moon is luminous, swallowing parting clouds. It’s tempting to attach to those in-between moments that are precious precisely because they are fleeting.
My mind, expanded by summer, is narrowing in on the cold-weather comforts I turn to: novels, poems, knitting, sketching, singing, slower asana, kitchen dancing. My daily haiku game has never been stronger!
My journal is full of hyperbolic descriptors: I don’t have the right words to document the sudden bubbles of joy from being between: feet kicking up cascades of leaves, their crimson-to-yellow gradients covering my rainboots; the wave-like momentum of a building storm, skies darkening in a blink as I pedal home; finding the flux between expansion and contraction in my asana practice just as dusk greets open windows, red brick studio walls holding us in warmth.
I am trying to decode the feeling of being both in and past, of appreciating without grasping (is there an oddly specific German word for that?). I haven’t quite figured out how to do that yet — but I am interested in documenting this in-between state, to know that I can hold it in memory without dwelling on it.
Here: a glimpse of passing from the hope of what-ifs to the contentment of what-is, packaged in the wistfulness of a perfect fall afternoon bike ride to my once-was home ❤
Caught a glimpse:
your outline
wraps a sturdy steel frame,
treading familiar
lines between cold concrete and
lamp-lit living room, where
yellowed spines
clamour
for your undivided attention.
Your eyes, maybe, softened by
afternoon shadows, their
turquoise centres
pool into golden edges
like the space where
waves wash over sand.
Each pedal whirr
carves the air
soft from
our fall’s lingering warmth.
Your movement is
focussed;
your thoughts
clear-cut,
sifted from rhythmic circles
of well-oiled chainrings.
Unlike you I am
unmoored, unwilling
to move in concert
with clean lines.
I am too full:
ideas bubble to burst,
a pot left too long
on hot coils.
Your evenness
marks my oscillations.
So I don’t
catch your eye or
call out a greeting.
Instead -
turn north, into the wind,
up my leafy street,
half-shaded in Equinox light.
My gaze lands on the
faded red brick
of sturdy homes,
edged by rustling vines:
whispers
to those who are less
certain.
I coast to stasis,
lean my bike against
this sunbleached fence,
and, warmed by goldenrod, I
bask in this listening.
This autumn, I am trying to bask in this listening, to be privy to interior stories, letting the memory of late-summer brightness permeate my thoughts without attaching to them. I am trying to accept that, like everything that is natural and good, these in-between feelings are not meant to last.
