Meditation
The days grow shorter, and this past weekend we reverted to winter time. The shift makes four in the afternoon seem like the approach of midnight. It’s been unusually warm here, but the smoke from the fires was blanketed by the heavy snow and cold of a few weeks ago. I can see the mountains, the fresh snow, the autumn blue sky, and the air feels like the dry heat of summer, even though the leaves are dead and brown flopped everywhere on the ground. Everything’s a tumble, from the weather to the pandemic to the election results. Layers of incongruity and uncertainty. It’s easy to feel unmoored and restless. Even Maggie Dietz gives us little consolation. “Did I love it enough, the full-throttle foliage,/While it lasted? Was I dazzled?” A good reminder from the spiraling center of retrospective regret. There is much around to delight and console: the warm weather, the snow on the mountains, the rustling brown leaves that whisper the promises of the sparkling light of winter, the vibrant green of spring, the dawning of a new day…all the promise of present and pregnant possibility.
Todd Breyfogle, Denver, Colorado
