Is it a sign?

Almost every day, no matter the weather

I walk the same walk

down the busy farm road we live on.

Me -- the trucks, the cars, the horses, and the odd bicycle.

I've had to jump in the hedgerow

more than once.

I can be amazingly, embarrassingly unobservant

but in five years

I've never noticed so much variety

in the hedgerows.

Doesn't lots of berries mean

a harsh winter to come?

Or is that

just another old wive's tale?

A page from the book of autumn

Like discarded pages

from the book

of autumn, the leaves

come trembling down.

Today is the first truly Novemberish day:  wet and wild.

The leaves are surrendering, not just the odd individual flutter

but whole regiments of them, felled by the great gusts of wind.

All of that October gold transmogrified

into sodden piles of brown muck.

I drive gingerly through the forest

that leads to my daughter's school.

Tires slip; windshield wipers scrape.

I take out porridge, still warm, for the chickens

because I feel ridiculously guilty about the discomforts

of their outdoor living space.

There is a great temptation to just go back to bed.

Cheers for hissing radiators, thick duvets

and the cappuccino that my husband

(still in his thick bathrobe)

is making for me right now.

Open your arms

to the dying colors,

to the fragile

beauties

of November.

Deep in the heart

of buried acorns,

nothing is lost.

(italicized words belong to Linda Pastan,

from Queen of a Rainy Country;

recommended reading for November.)

Family Roundabout

Autumn.  Around it comes, round again.
I took a long walk this morning -- because the sun was shining, because the children were otherwise occupied -- and I remember thinking this is the tipping point.
This is the day when everything is at its burnished, glowing peak.
In a week, maybe two if we don't get too much tearing wind, it will all fall down.
The darkness will close in on both sides:  another Bonfire Night, another Thanksgiving, another Christmas, another New Year's.  Feasts and festivities for compensation.

I've been reading a novel called Family Roundabout -- and I keep thinking about the aptness of the title.
Not just because I am the family chauffeur; and round and round I go.  Although there is that aspect of it, especially during half-term week -- when I have driven to Malvern, London, Cambridge, Oxford and Reading in so many days.
But also because I am the fulcrum of family life, and I feel like everyone else is a lever.  I am the circular and circumscribed, and everyone else is an exit -- leading to a separate road.
For this week, at least, I have embraced the busy roundabout of family life.  When it is going full-tilt, I feel necessary . . . (although there are a thousand conflicted thoughts behind that admission).

Will tomorrow (already today) be the last Halloween party of my daughter's childhood?
Will we still be in this house next year, when autumn rolls round again?
I am craving change -- and lots of it is coming (jobs, schools, home) whether I want it or not.

And yet; there is something so comforting about the roundaboutness of things.   

September apples

There must be an explanation

scientific, or otherwise,

for why the apple tree

gnarled and bent and elderly

brings forth an edible harvest

every other year only,

and sometimes one in three.

Do some living things

keep their own schedule

for resting and renewal?

Or does the fruit depend

on some other equation:

like January frost

plus April showers

when June is hot and dry.

Last year's apples weren't worth picking

but this fall there's a bumper crop.

Every branch is weighed down so

even when the birds claim their share

there is more than enough fruit

to fill every jar I own

with sweet September applesauce.