OLD BONES / OLD SOULS - Day Three

Lots of crunching and
cracking

interrupts this quiet
fall morning,

the kind of perfect
day I wish 

could enter every cell
of my body.

But it's not just my old
bones I hear,
it's the twig snap of a
white-tailed deer

running scared when the path turns.

It's the squirrels
making provisions,
their chins looking
charred from
gleaning black,
cracked walnuts

It's the blue jay,
high in the canopy
hammering hickory nuts
and letting
the pieces splatter to the dry ground.

It's hundreds of
grackles and blackbirds,

chattering as they
mass migrate from one
tree top to another,
that comfort me.

Their chorus, which is
for me not them,
(they know how to
navigate this world),
says, "It is time
now...

...get ready
...wind down
...make soup
...plan to have some
folks over
...choose something to
learn
on those too soon
nights
when the wind
threatens harm
just outside the
frosted window.
"Study
blackbirds," they say.

This is what those old
souls are clacking.

They're reminding me
there are reasons 

for the seasons.


Mini-Retreat Suggestion:
Take 15 minutes to look outside your favorite window in your house.  Write a short poem about what you see.  What elements of fall call you to "wind down?"  Post your thoughts under Comments.