THE OCTOBER SUN (NUMBER 190)

The wildflowers had passed. Their season had begun in the moist and textured weather of

the spring. At that time, a liminal season, a passageway, the sky had been many shades of blue and then by turns gray and even black. But it had been a darkness with its own type of beauty that carried a depth, a scope, a promissory note that there were hidden cycles of nature that showed themselves on the tops of the earth. In the summer,- the sky had cleared and those flowers, all the hues in their petals,- blue, yellow, orange, purple, and red,- had proudly danced sideways in the breeze until they stood stationary like a well wrought painting or poem or statue. And there were a hundred, a thousand, a million and more other things of the summer from feral shrubs to coy foxes and small coyotes, to chaparral that presented itself in peculiar shapes and reminded one of something seen in a dream sequence or fairy tale story.

But that had all gone. The same fields and forests were different. A cursory glance would not indicate such, but the land was transitioned and even the vibration was new. It was autumn, and though the summer had tried and succeeded in many ways, to stretch its lifespan out more than usual,- it succumbed to the colder air and now even frost visited the logs and flaxen fields, the trunks of various trees and the surrounding loams. The wild apples were not only ripe and fallen, - but now squashed or eaten by this animal or that bird. So what was it then? What remained in and along the long meandering pathways and the labyrinthine contours that snaked around the forest perimeters? 

There were grapes, purple and plentiful, rounded and visiting the earth. They sat watching the walkers or a few small insects that still managed to live. And rabbits, - aware and fast and colored like the dark dirt of the deeper areas of the fields themselves. Large trees rising to the October sun and a photograph or writing could never do justice to the feeling and sight of being beside and under, of walking around and by such old sturdy guardians of the terrene and verdant earth.

The Pines, still short, but then in adolescence, scattered across a series of hectares. Canines

race through them and seem to sense with a hidden sixth knowledge how to go ‘round them at the last split second. The strange flowers in long cup like containers nature had made,- bursting out,- like white feathers,- and myriad shapes they took depending on the size of each and where the wind and the sun, where the slope of the summit or the mood of the afternoon took them. Some light green bean plants, - mostly fallen, but still affixed to other plants and trees. Or the sand where some animal had dug a hole and then gotten distracted and left to other vocations and destinations.

There were many more besides, - many-many. But the main thing then was the sun. It was the October sun and it stayed stationary and strong, full of prowess and delight. Its rays let down upon logs, one quiet series of strange blue berries on a faded and dried out log. The October sun seemed to have a wisdom and gnosis that was ancient and new at once. It was patient and waited and reminded one of a saying that declared The truth can wait and is not in a hurry precisely because it is the Truth.  

And of the inner worlds, the memories, the stories within

stories and the flashes of insight and beauty or of terror and trouble, all take a long time and can only present themselves if and when they are meant to. Perhaps another day, in the disquiet and pregnant spring. Maybe for some different mood, - like the humid summer of wildflowers that throws the soul back to the soul. There is always the icy and reliant winters don’t forget. Or else, just possibly, some of those poems of the mind or markings of the spirit shall step forth under that or another, more distant, October sun.

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