The first snow fell yesterday. A strong stormy wind blows this morning, scattering the leaves which begin now to fall in earnest. Shorter days. The changing outside weather impresses itself on our inner life, challenging our “routines”  and confusing  the body. It reminds us of rhythms and patterns in a world that loves predictability, and of things passing through when we foolishly give permanence to our mind states:

O to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger,
ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do

Walt Whitman, Me Imperturbe

If I can take the dark with open eyes
And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange
(For love itself may need a time of sleep),
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure – if I can let you go.

May Sarton, Autumn Sonnets