Following my nose this time of year, I
participate in the ongoing,
sometimes melancholy,
annual transition.
Familiar scents of fallen leaves and the crumbly
duff they are becoming,
of damp earth and mists
that drift across the fields like
apparitions,
of yellow chrysanthemums, still blooming,
and ripened apples in the nearby orchards.
Pungent fragrance of sluggish black-swallowtail caterpillars
still clinging to the parsley, and
the dried basil I have yet to cut down,
of garlic cloves now buried in the soft soil, and
drooping marigolds, and the spent tomato plants
I brush against as I pass
through the muted vegetable patch.
Another harvest complete.
At this sacred moment,
at the turning of the season,
this nostalgic incense holds the memories
of every autumn I have ever known.
Let me behold and
enter willingly,
gladly,
gratefully,
into the
Sabbath of the land.
