Crescent Moon: Winds of Change

Through the normal course of things, I chanced today upon this modest rhyme, after being greeted this morning by a colleague bearing a heavy heart, and the news of two deaths--one expected, one not, both quite tragic in their way--in one extended family, in one day.


A spider web pulled tight between two stones
With nothing left but autumn leaves to catch
Is maybe a winter sign, or the thin blue bones
Of a hare picked by ants.  A man can attach 

Meanings enough to the wind when his luck is out,
But, having stumbled into this season of grief,
I mean to reflect on the life that is here and about
In the fall of the leaves–not on the dying leaf. 

Something more tough, reliable and stark
Carries the blood of life toward a farther spring–
Something that lies concealed in the soundless dark
Of burr and pod, in the seeds that hook and sting.

I have learned from these that love which endures the night
May smolder in outward death while the colors blaze,
But trust my love–it is small, burr-coated, and tight.
It will stick to the bone. It will last through the autumn days. 

- Winter Sign, by Loren Eiseley


There is, also, Fall, who this time has chosen to caress with warmth our living skins, before we softly slip them into the long sleeves of our shortening days...The wind is generous tonight; he stirs the pot, that the Moon might sup, and that both might rest by morning.