From Me

Someone I know said “there's something different about the autumn sun.” And I agree.

For many years, I've had a strange obsession with death. Not wanting to die. But a fascination with the threshold. What comes after?

There's a sense of familiarity. A sense of something, somewhere, transforming. Big time letting go.

I used to tell people, “I can't wait until I'm old.” I was excited to see what will happen to me.

When I look at the setting autumn sun, the old feeling comes back to me. Autumn is a time of death. You can see it painted on trees. And you can feel the sense of something passing. A season, a point in your life. Something is dropping away. In you. In the world. Everywhere.

The veil between what will happen to us when we die is at its thinnest.

When I went to college, my teacher showed me a poem by ee cummings. It made me fall in love with poetry because it spoke to the part of me that comes alive during the fall time, the death time.

l(a

le af fa

ll

s) one l

iness

Behind my feelings I hear this poem. Life is just a leaf falling from the tree to the ground, devoured again by the earth. Life begets life.

The trees are red. The air is crisp. I don't know what happens when we die. But I know there is a spring. And I know how it smells.