Here in the Irish and Celtic calendar, the season of Autumn began on Monday, the 1st of September. Although the weather is still very mild, the mornings are misty and some leaves have already started to fall. We are moving into a period which helps us reflect on impermanence and on the fact that all things change. Our meditation practice reminds us that there is only suffering to be had when we try to fix things solid, or hold onto them, like the long days of summer or the memories of times past. We instinctively prefer permanence and how it tells a story of a solid, single identity. Instead, in reality, like the seasons, we are always changing; things come and go in our lives. Nature lets go and moves on. Maybe we can learn from that.
If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one;
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation,
Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.
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
photo of the Barrow river at Bagenalstown, Co. Carlow.
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