Loss, Latency and Leaves
For a month the skies were full of geese and other birds practicing their migration; moving between field and lake in large V’s. Sometimes they came so quietly close that I could hear their wings move against the wind. Sometimes their trumpeting filled the air with wild noise making. Did their music, loud and quiet summon the season? Did the sound of their wings beat golden the leaves? Did their clarion calls conjure the north winds coming?
A week ago, the morning sky was bright with blue, the world lush with autumnal excess. Everything, still and perfect, I could hear the leaves hold their breath and shimmer with sheer delight at the glory of their beauty. Then I heard them; flocks and flocks cascading over my head; full of sound and silence, strong direction; south. By late afternoon, the north wind blew and blew and blew and before the armoury of the storm, the leaves fell. The barren time began.
Of all the losses that come with winter, this is the one that hurts the most. No more green, or gold or red, or brown; no songful rustling, no more hidden places. Depth is lost, stark transparency reigns. I need the textured waves of shapes and sounds. I am bereft, half souled in the months without them. I am co-inherent with the trees. When a tree is bare of leaves it is not in its fullness. It is not flourishing it is quiescent. Then what of me?
I am also latent without the leaves, a part of me is undone, vulnerable, slumbering, and slow; un-ready until they return. How do I receive this latency? I know it is not to lie about the loss and lack. It is not to rail, writhe or wither either, nor to fill and fret and fuss. But it is also not equanimity, or always looking for the positive. All of these ways have been tried and found wanting.
What is it then? What is the truth within lack and latency? There is a strange creativity I have glimpsed in the forest and myself within the white waiting. This is the ore I am mining, this unforced creativity I sense is there. I cannot grasp it and I have not one wit of control over it, but the trees trust it as they stand dignified in their nakedness, so perhaps shall I.
