I know that I live in England and I also know what all of my readers in foreign parts think about our obsession with the weather but I still have to say it: Rain!
It hasn’t rained for weeks so I did the unthinkable over the weekend, I watered the garden in October – wielding a hose is a traditional form of English rain dance and as soon as I had made the arid soil moist, the weather changed.
The ancient mound behind my house is beginning to show its Autumn browns and the sky has disappeared behind sludge white clouds – a page waiting to be written on.
It would be easy to get the Autumn Blues as I look out of my back windows over roofs and chimney pots as the season changes. Especially now that I am entering October, the month of endings as it has become in my imagination.
A year ago, on the 30th. October I nearly died, and no matter how much I try, I fear that the distinctive light and colours of October are just too vivid not to be associated in my memory with endings.
Sorry October but you are not going to win this time. You may look damp and drear but I am not going there with you. My mood is Spring-like. That sky, as I say, is a page waiting to be written on. So here’s a seasonal poem:
Eternal blossom –
transience reclaimed,
redefined and maintained.
Not a flash of beauty on the cusp of a season,
a sentimentalised flush of blushing colour,
or a momentary thrill on a passing breeze.
Standing blossom-covered under your boughs,
Intertwined, unseen and immeasurable,
my roots meet yours.
Fixing us here in perpetuity,
timeless, seasonless
– Autumn-free.