Fall Equinox 2010 - a reading (on YouTube)
The day dawns on a knife's edge, white light at right angles, reflected soft yet sharp and flinty. All the rose and gold is gone. The world is torn in opposite directions by two equally powerful horses, one white, one black, summer and winter, hope and despair. Within weeks, we'll know which one will win. Light and shadow grapple in a stranglehold. The light is fading. Like a sling stone arcing past its zenith, we prepare for the fall.
Soon the world will be cloaked in shadow. The time of illusions is upon us, a time when men see the world they want to see. We once again descend into a dark fairyland beyond the reflecting pool where acceptance becomes intolerance, moderation turns to greed, prosperity to war. Torture and surveillance come back in vogue, progress and reason fall out of fashion. Children sight security down the barrel of a gun. A candy apple potion waits outside my door, a bright pink post-it beckoning me to drink and share this common vision of the world.
I resist this temptation of the trickster spirits as their numbers build toward Samhain. I prepare my protections and sacrifices within an isolated circle. From behind the distorted hand mirror, an innocent seductress unleashes a jarful of beautiful evils upon our world out of curiosity. She seals their remedy back inside when she learns what she has done, where it sleeps alone in darkness against our future need. A lone candle burns brighter at midnight on midwinter. A lone voice carries farther in the silence a cappella. A long drink of water tastes sweeter after the rainless days of drought.
On days like this, I wish I could transform myself into a tree. A leafy sanctuary for birds and squirrels. A shady rest for weary travelers. A stepping stone for children to climb into the sky. I would not run when the axmen came, as they always seem to do. For a short while, I would stand resolute against their rusty blades as they ticktocked away my skin, their blows ringing as regular as clockwork up and down the grove. Little do they know the skulls of their ancestors lie buried beneath my brethrens' knees. The saplings feed upon their marrow. Trees don't attack or defend, they are patient, their acorns opportunistic. Even with their ancestors felled, seeds sleep peacefully beneath the long, harsh snows of winter, waiting only for the warm breath of sunlight to revive the grove again.
The wheel must turn through its progressions. One day, the world will return to balance. Then, brightly colored blossoms will beckon rather than the flickering flames of the discarded. A world of life and rebirth rather than leaf mold and decay. A world of hope. Just as there is no summer without winter, there can be no spring without the fall.
© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III
--------------------------------
ReplyDeleteNotes and asides:
--------------------------------
I was telling my aunt this week that I've recently found myself self-censoring the ideas I have for essays because I know they will be unpopular. That's a deadly habit for a writer. Karen told me to write them out anyway. Sage advice. Writers write because they must. Sometimes we are trying to convince people one way or another. Ultimately, we can only express what we see and feel, and hope we shine a light on something someone else has missed. The hardest part of being a writer is pretending that you don't care what other people think.
As a note of clarity, the Equinox falls at 11:09 pm EDT on 9/22 this year, 3:09 UTC on 9/23. Some calendars have it marked one way, some the other. I always conform to local time for when to post. My apologies to my readers in European time zones.