Autumn Light
the leaves in the stream move without a plan the clouds in the valley drift without design I closed my eyes and everything was fine I opened them again because I love mountains
Stonehouse Red Pine • The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse
Five things on being astonished:
“It is an astonishment to be alive, and it behoves you to be astonished.” — Katherine Rundell, paraphrasing poet John Donne
“If you attend thoughtfully to what you already have, you need nothing more. It’s all here.” — Claire Messud
“Let me / keep my mind on what matters, / which is my work, / which is mostly standing
... See moreBut to say it’s a nice day is difficult, and the nice day itself passes on. It’s up to us to conserve the nice day in a wordy, florid memory, sprinkling new flowers and new stars over the fields and skies of the empty, fleeting outer world.
Fernando Pessoa • The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Modern Classics)
It is officially the first day of fall. The leaves may have barely begun to turn, but, as Charlotte Mendelson reminds us, “ ’Tis the season of mist, nature’s Photoshop; trenchcoats; barley; licensed melancholy; munificence; and glorious rot.” It is a time when new growth ceases and gardens begin to wilt and shrivel. “After the
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