A Short Walk In Late October - LK Potts

[Larry Robinson]

A Short Walk In Late October


Today the bright  mid-day sun  warms :  trees ablaze in colored splendor,

fiery reds and yellows ochers,  shedding leaves of sienna and vermillion,    

 spent and crisp,  exuberant, in death.   A grey squirrel bounds up a maple,

an invisible  Raven scolds somewhere high in the canopy.   

On a ridge just North, the broad stand of conifers serrate an azure  sky, stately in  their robes of green.

Long horse-tail cirrus flare out from the West, announcing the promise of first rain .


Here I am reminded the earth still turns, morning to night, the seasons  come and go 

n their ageless ways;  stars yet spin in the boundless vault of space;  

somewhere around the globe, unseen volcanic forces churn deep in the planet’s core, primed for release. 

Change and continuity.  Ebb and flow.  Renewal.   Should not this be enough? 

After all,  the Great Mother insists on balance, correcting  as needed here and there,

cradling all life in Her devoted domain:  

even her colossal storms, unconcerned for our welfare, wash clean.

My one comfort:: I can go to my grave knowing   She will  never abandon her post.

Hers is law and simple truth:  everything happens because everything else happens.  


Surely, ithen, it is time to savor this walk, on a day like this one,  breathing in the gifts of our home,

and allow the soul to fill with gratitude.


How utterly  absurd our importance appears:   only by a divine gift, a microsecond measured by the eons. 

Here on this planet, a  miracle born of violent cosmos and billions of years,  with titanic collisions

bearing  just the right measure of happy accidents.   Patience of an inhuman kind to confound  our  petty desires.  


What can I make of this tumult and chaos, disappointment, fears and anguish? 

Surely, it is a time to allow one’s attention to reach outward and up.   To abandon one’s wits to awe, to only witness.

So then:  Follow Her lead.   I must walk in balance.  Walk in balance.

Walk in balance here on the  thin skin of her extravagantly  generous body,  honoring 

the bones of our ancestors calling us from underneath our feet,.

Dare to be at peace now:  

for even a short walk,  and embrace  this time, this path, this life, this place.     


	- LK Potts