The moon is here in all its singularity, full and bright, and daring me to look at it all night and not go blind. November is not yet here but in the wings, and threatening. The mood shifts, worry and fear attendant.

When I think of the year and its divisions, the prismed light across the page, time’s markers are uneven, an anarchic rout.  The losses collide into the dark months, and if a few spill into March the chill of winter accompanies. There is good reason to sit in the dark and stare at the moon, realizing more clearly, “Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.”

This, I think, is why I walk in Autumn and forage until my pockets fill with stones and twigs, why I take huge comfort in contemplation of a single thing. To look at it until it returns my gaze. Until there is no forward or back, or there is both at the same time, a cancellation that returns me to my self. I carry home my gleanings and arrange and rearrange until there is an order, each thing remembered in its place in time.

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