Fall/November

The Hawk and Necessity

On this November day, I look at all the fallen leaves upon the ground, crisp and sere, before their final transformation into dust and so dwell on final things; on morning thoughts and evening thoughts and thoughts too vast for momentary musings.

I pause outside my house and look upward. A hawk circles above my head, scanning the ground for the telltale movement of some hapless vole or chipmunk. The fallen leaves provide a fleeting shelter to the hunted and, perplexed, it then scampers on to the imagined safety of a familiar hole or burrow to prolong its brief existence for a time. The sky-bound stalker, gliding to and fro above, awaits the ripened moment to drop into a deadly, soundless plummet, and grasps, with crushing talons, the unfit, unwary or unwise, bearing it aloft to be ripped, consumed and consecrated forever more to hawkhood. I turn to rake the fallen leaves and praise necessity.

These late fall days and much solitude drive me to such thoughts. The slow ending of the year makes one think of work unfinished and goals unaccomplished, and often a sense of being swept along by time and the tides of memory. Should I write my recollections of my vanished world? I would not have my shadows and my settings languish in a box of lonely papers. Are there memories to evoke? Only the ones that have faded away in a lifetime of summer suns. Are there feelings to leave behind? Only these: my sighs for things lost; my regrets for failed attainments; my excitement for things discovered; my joy at what beauty I perceived; my sadness for the tragedy of life; my wonder that I lived at all!

If I were to be remembered for some short while--it would be undeniably short in the scheme of things--I would be remembered as one who could glory in the power of well-written words; who could wander in worlds unseen by others; who knew an enduring love that never altered despite the ugliness and confusion of this world; who heard both sad and sweet music in many things; and who felt exhilaration in the grandeur and inexhaustibility of life.

If this sounds lugubrious and strange, blame it on the lateness of the season when days are short, nights are long and mornings arise through damp billows of fog to rest on the bare branches of trees. What sunlight there is is inadequate to dispel my somber moods and disperse the impending sweep of coldness when the blood turns sullen and the pines bend and creak in the frosted air.

But I shall survive all this just as I did last year. My dormancy at this time will nourish hope, anticipation and thankfulness for whatever years lie ahead. The days grow shorter, the winter winds will blow and the pace will slacken as the natural world sleeps. But daybreak is only a dream or two away.