Autumn Meditation

The trees were yellow and red. The leaves on the trees were of a yellow hue dotted with black rot, but the red was initially brilliant and remained so until the papery leaves, the papery, silky, shining, greasy leaves fell as leaves tend to fall to the ground --- that is, reluctantly, bobbing, cradling in the wind as if the real comfort were not in the tree or on the cold, soft ground but rather in that insubstantial middle, that place where words and notes go, dreams possibly go, and all the things invisible but existing, and so somehow meaningful. Surely, the drama is in the chasm. And then that is not the lesson. No, the lesson is in the leaves, the jagged, shimmering, silent, dull leaves hanging like heavy, inutile hands on the end of the bodies of silent, skeletal ghosts, in a world haunted by the dim memories of previous losses, in a world cold and then warm, in a universe endless and incomprehensible in its black, blazing continuity, in its persistent, perfect-fifth hum, its speed. And that incomprehensibility is the lesson. And, surely, then, it is not. No, the lesson is in the bark on the trees that holds the yellow and red leaves, the bark rotten and indigestible and dry and hard and cold, the bark the dry, thin, filmy covering over the rings of the years inside the massive diameter of the unhuggable tree, the years that circle each other in perfect order. But then the distance between each line begins to lessen as each year goes by until the lines have become indistinct and inseparable, have in fact become one continuous line going around and around, forgetting the hops and leaps, the poignant peaks, the memorable trinkets, the things a tree holds onto because there are not many other things to hold onto and so each one can be accounted for and glanced at on occasion and even loved. Painful, profound, the tree digs deep, its roots descending steeply at first and then gradually, because a tall structure needs a wide base. And storm after storm blasts its husky frame. Over and over the needling rains impinge upon its leaves, and the leaves fall and turn downwards and the tree sways and bucks, and the branches snap and splinter and fall on houses, on cars, on the ground, on dogs, on people, and the gray sky looks peaceful despite the water flooding it, the wind pursuing it, the shocks of light speeding through it. And then there are the deep cries after, as if somewhere in that roiling sky there is a sad person, face contorted in a mask of grief, indeed a grief large enough that it can only be manifested in this way, as if the storm, and the tree falling to the ground and destroying the mud and the house on top of the mud, and the floor in the house, and the beds and pianos and sofas and tables on the floor, as if the storm that crawls over our landscape is all of the pain of the world come together. All of it. Every tear and moan. Seeing it in this light, it is not at all unsurprising that the next day everything is on the ground, that the leaves, rot red and yellow, flattened and two-dimensional, are on the ground, next to everything big and small. And now everything is still and quiet, indeed almost comfortable, as if this is where it all belonged, as if this is the way things were supposed to be, as you look out over the miles and miles of disorder, as you pick up something small, like a pendant, or a wedding ring, or a music box, or a record or book, or a picture of, say, lovers, or a family, or a dead son, and look, yay, stare, yay, glare, at everything that could have come of it if not for all this pain --- this hulking, huffing-and-puffing, obese and snorting pain --- and everything that still could, despite all this death, despite the night that is coming although the sun has just risen.