Tomorrow we head, officially, into autumn. Truly, it’s my favorite. But Jenny’s post last week hit all kinds of home for me. I’ve got backlogs from this summer that I am very slowly making my way through. In some ways, I like to think of it as dragging those hot and languid days out just a bit longer, as our light wanes and the snows start to threaten.

This time of year, though, so often brings that good old Mary Oliver poem to mind –

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

Wishing you whatever it is you need in this season of transition.

All the best,
Alison