Wet pavement.

With the passing of our birthday came autumn heralding in with it the magic and beauty and mystery of yet another changing season, the world growing older. As my feet made contact with pavement I awoke slowly and slipped into an easy cadence of just moving forward. It rained, but only slightly, and was really more of a mist that slowly fell earthward, covering everything in a hazy wetness. The best weather for a run, in my completely biased opinion. The trail was covered with the early leaves of fall, orange and red and yellow, but mostly brown and fallen for the dryness of the summer. They crunched and crackled and broke into pieces under my feet.

The dampness of the air held thick and heavy the fragrance of the turning season. The last of the cut hay, burdened apple trees letting loose their fruit to the ground, the smell of cider and of woodsmoke. The trail led me past bonfires, farmers turning their fields, families not put-off by the rain, gathered under tarps and canopies, hanging on to the last of the sunlight before the cold forces the living world inside for the dark months of winter.

I rounded the halfway point and started the trek back. The trail went through a clearing far removed from the roads and the houses, and for a moment the whole of the earth was silent. A distant and lonely formation of wild geese flew overhead and one let out a solitary cry into the vast and gloomy sky. A reminder from an ancient world that beauty is not meted out in handfuls, it just is. The wind rustled through the grass and the wildflowers and the rain soaked my clothing. Mind gave way to body and I subsided into each breath, each footfall, each swing of each arm, and the way the rain stuck to my face and lingered on my eyelashes.

There is no meditation like running, and no perfection like going beyond what your mind will allow.

Steel yourself up, warriors!

I remember when I first read the words of the poem it was like the easing of tension when things fit into their right places. Dust shaken off. I love autumn for the high, clear blue skies, the cold just at the edge of the wind foreshadowing the bitterness to come, the pungency of the leaves decaying, all things subsiding into themselves to prepare for the harshness of the winter ahead. And so it is with us. We cleave ourselves of the baggage we accumulated during the fickle spring and unrelenting summer. Winter is not as kind and must be met sparsely and with unencumbered hearts. We begin the transit back into our selves, to find that old refuge and reconnect with the lonely and formidable strengths which, in its hopeful foolishness, spring put up on a shelf, and left forgotten.

That is all I have. All of our strength and courage are with you, our hands stretched out to wrench the luggage from your shoulders if you'd only give some sign.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Wild Geese (Mary Oliver)

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Word from the mark.

The streets last night were bright as dawn though it was still hours away from the rising of the sun. A full and lonely moon hung in the east like a Christmas ornament revealing the world in layers of blue that only the deepest and most remote part of the eye could acknowledge, and make sense of. A belabored run took me past houses that I realized I had never noticed before, the moon's luminescence revealing the remotest places that before I passed by, blind. A couple argued loudly on the stoop of a recessed tenement, a cat darted from behind a tree and across the road. Cars passed, students wound their way home.

Halfway to the halfway point and the clouds obscured the moon, a perfect halo of blue circling that hidden orb like when we were kids and used to sneak cigarettes on the deck off of my room in the late night. Sticks and leaves and other detritus from the storm littered the path I took and the asphalt responded to each footfall with a wary and suspicious sigh. As if it knew better.

Past the house, finally, where my grandmother used to live. The sign next to the door still welcoming guests that hadn't been around to call for over a decade. The memory of my ancestors eviscerated by the wild pack of wolves that is this life, their bones turned to ash and left to the wind. To scatter and not to rest. Their story my burden, as if by keeping the heritage alive in my heart I could call upon their strength and fortitude when my own wanes. A nod to my childish belief in such a system of interconnectedness via moral code as I sprinted to the finish, to our door.

I turned the corner and waited but you didn't come. Foolish maybe for me to think that you would. The wolf subsided into the loneliness of it all and once the letting-go was done felt again at ease. I will take the plain south, through the barren snow field towards the crest of mountains with no name, just always out of reach. When I was a child I used to look at the thick stands of trees in the distance, at the far reaches of the plowed fields we'd pass in the car headed to wherever we were going. I would fantasize about opening the door the next time my father stopped and running without stopping until I reached the trees, and then running still. As if there would be life waiting for me somewhere out there devoid of the modern complications, natural, something that I could make sense of. And so it is.

We fit between the raindrops.

The moment came at last and I watched it pass and go by as if the me it involved was just a character in some other person's omniscient version of reality. As if I could be at the same actor and director, as if life can be manipulated in such a way. He leaned out of his window and the cars passing down the road slowed in deference to the fleetingness of our exchange. Small talk. Inside jokes. Laughter and blue eyes, small for his face, I remember thinking, but endearing.

He released me with the standard, be careful, be safe, be smart, and I waved it off as I usually do, saying that I always am. He looked at me and, me being too much of the wolf to give in first, I could not look away. I would hate it, I mean, I would be really upset if anything were to happen to you or if you were to get hurt because I really like you. You know, I'm fond of you. A lot. With stutter-steps and awkward pauses filled with laughter it came out like a sighted person fumbling through the dark towards the exit. I watched the taillights until the red no longer reflected off the grey and dismal street.

Inside I was vapor carried off by the rain and what was left was just reaction, and the ability to do my job. What has happened? I fell into something and I should reach for my flashlight and have a good look around. Instead I light candles and reflect upon how sometimes it is better to just wait and see what comes.

You help me find it.

I wore the shirt until the last lingering scent was gone and what remained was the salty crust of sweat and heat and the memory of it. The room a shambles as I stretched beneath a single ray streaming in through an open window, the waning sun's earliest sentinel of autumn to come. Outside children laughed in the street as they made their way home from school and the wind rustled dry leaves off the branches of the two big maple trees. The simple perfection of things falling into place for even just a moment.

Later the calculated exchanges were endearing for their transparency. The roles that we can play for each other, the slots that we can fill. And I wondered, can there be weakness between our kind? Can the hunter make himself vulnerable enough to put up his bow for even just one embrace? The answers come slowly and in measured doses. We both fumble in the dark.

At the meeting an old familiar face told me in all seriousness that the most important thing he learned came from my father when he said, life is tough unless you weaken and I knew instantly that it wasn't true. Later I asked my father and he laughed and said that he had no idea where the quote came from but he was not the source.

And I remembered something I heard once which is far more accurate, that the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. The words came to me easily and something that had been asleep for a long time stirred inside me as if to wake at last.

After awhile we walked through the darkened parking lot to the very back where I had left the car and as we went we passed who I can only refer to as orange pants now and seeing him I instantly felt a sacred kinship to my father. I pushed him playfully and then pulled him close to me. We are not the ones they speak of who will be broken. At home the exchanges between we two hunters continued and the fire within me again stirred, each word a billows stoking the glowing coals. There is a balance between strength and weakness, a line which separates the tenderness and the harshness of the world. There is a way to carry sorrow beautifully and to be constantly awestruck by the goodness of what can be contained in one single moment of this life.