Thoreau called images like the ones below “autumnal”. He described the ripeness of such leaves at great length. He called them fruits. Keats did much the same. He called them mellow fruitfulness, on the edge of death. Dante presented them as ancient etruscan, or perhaps Celtic, echoes. He placed them in hell. Those are all my ancestors. They are old, wise visions, from far away. I lived in those romantic agricultural worlds, too. I used to make the same observations. I learned that culture well. It was mine.

Now that culture is foreign. Now I see spirit rising in a hawthorn spirit. I see it holding. I see spirit singing with a different intensity high up, in a height that is another form of spirit. I just don’t see autumn anymore. I no longer get that bittersweet autumnal buzz. The orchards are behind me now and I am growing older and closer to spirit myself. The earth is growing transparent, and the sky is growing opaque. I have lived on this syilx land for a long time now.

I am in the wind.