This morning, the Autumn bids its farewell, begins to turn somewhere else and leaves her sister, Winter to stay. Says to be kind to yourselves and all the animals. These plants don’t need you so much now - so go tend to your own garden - that inner mat of weeds, roots and perenial growings. This soil is now for the tilling, now for the care.

When we do not heed the seasons and their changes we miss our essential life - that which flows from star, moon, sunlight down to leaf, stem and root - we miss the chance to become another part of us - undergo a transfiguration.

What is possible now?

Now that the fruit trees leaves have fallen? Now that the cold has changed your clothes and habits? Now that fire, if you are lucky enough to have its companion - beckons you to the dark mysteries of the heart - the alchemical prose of seeking words and songs for your harvested life?

This comes in the waiting. In the persisting night after wakeful night. Its in the places where you thought you had lost. Where the story damned you. In those places, stand up, hold your ground - for they are yours - no one can give you their heroics or shut you down with alternative choices. Stand firm in the cold ground of your life and love it. Like earth mother loves her creatures - all the way though.