Autumn sigh: A reflection

Transitions

Spoken rendition of “Autumn sigh”.

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Autumn sigh was written in late September 2022, early Autumn in the northern hemisphere. It describes an experience I had that morning and the transcendence behind that day’s everyday occurrences.

I thought I had finished this poem over the span of just a few days, however when I began to revisit it in the following months, I was never satisfied. With autumn settling into the midwestern states in the US this year, I decided to revisit the work, and the editing brought this piece together.

Photo by Visax on Unsplash

Poetic format

This poem is constructed with three lyrical stanzas that are bookended by a short poem that contains the overarching theme. It was also written with the intent that the bookend poem can stand alone.

I moved forward with the bookend structure with an intuition that having the stanzas stand apart would be an interesting way to illustrate transition. The bookend poem’s brevity, paired with the longer and more lyrical stanzas in the middle, has the effect that by the time the reader arrives at the end stanza (the resulting transition) they forget the first stanza existed, and creates the effect that you might describe as, “Wait, what?”, hopefully driving the reader to go back to the first stanza to uncover the bookend poem. Here are the bookends, paired together.

Autumn’s arrival
has nothing to do 
with the turning 
of a calendar page

and everything 
to do with an 
inner sigh 
of relief.

Overarching theme

The main theme that emerged from this autumnal poem is an exploration of transition. Regarding the seasons of nature, our calendar is based on celestial positioning, which seems straight forward. However, just looking at a calendar has never made much sense to me. That likely stems from living in the Midwestern states of the US, for when the calendar tells us we’ve transitioned, it typically does not feel that way. Everything seems to be off by about a month. The calendar tells us spring starts in March, but some of our biggest snowfalls happen then. Summer starts in June, but the muggy air has settled in by late May. By the time September starts, you can feel the humidity departing and see leaves beginning their slow transition away from green, but there are a few more weeks until Autumn officially starts. And winter? It starts in late December, but by the time late November arrives the trees are bare and the temperature has plummeted. A clean, quarterly rhythm just does not exist in many geographies.

That’s life though. An idyllic pattern of seasons and transitions between them does not seem to happen and it is highly personal. We are left with the task of telling the story of our own transitions from season to season. The other day, I was talking with a stunning human who was describing how she knows the transition to autumn has occurred. For her, it is a moment of intentional discomfort, a change in the smell and vibrancy of the air, and an intuitive knowing. The illustrations this poem holds for my experience of the same transition are a window that has been sealed over the summer being slowly opened to the fall breeze, coffee being brewed for the purpose of intention and enjoyment, and stepping outside in the morning hours during the time where stars still shine and dawn is just beginning to illuminate the horizon.

Of course, seasons are a beautiful representation of life, told frequently through art, literature, and poetry. The abundance of seasonal art is telling of the powerful theme it is in the human existence. How we define our personal transitions are a necessary act in understanding who we are as humans, and how we pause, let go and move forward.

Lyrical themes

Other themes emerge in the lyrical stanzas through a progression of my experience that fall morning that are representative of a progression through an examined life. The first is the process of receiving the beginning of a change that is handed to you by something other than yourself. I find there are times we can feel a change coming before it arrives. How we choose to receive it can vary wildly but often shapes our experience of it. Do we resist it and will it to depart because we like what we have? Do we hurry and pull it forward at a pace the change is not ready for? Are we ready but nervous for the unknown this change will have in our lives? Does the change arrive, and we pretend as if things are just as they were the day before?

This poem tells the story of one who believes they are ready, but also holds some resistance and finds they are unprepared for the change at hand. After the arrival, we see the change settle this individual and they learn that readiness and resistance often coexist.

My hand turns the latch
signaling a readiness
for your potential presence,
slide the window
and find
a slight resistance
to the slowly 
widening openness.
Bare unprepared skin
encounters crisp
outward to inward breeze
a delicate whisper,
no more impassioned longing
but cool breath
releasing a settled knowing
that I am ready.

I am continuously drawn to the line outward to inward breeze, and why there was a need to include more than just the word breeze in the stanza. The three words before breeze were cut what felt like a dozen times in the early writing of this poem. The sentence was simply an attempt to describe the sensation of being in a warm room with the first cool breeze of fall coming in, but I felt that was made clear without those words. However, when the poem draft was done it needed those words to aid the larger theme that emerged throughout the overall arc of the lyrical stanzas. These three words are what make clear how seeing the external world as other than us can have such an impact on who we are and how we feel. In the case of this poem, it is the result we hope the external will have on us, but we know many times the opposite occurs. Depending on external factors to bring us peace and contentment is fraught with problems.  

Next, we find a picture of the sacred in everyday life. Sacred is a word that religion and spirituality have typically championed as a way of setting something apart, and often in a way that creates a system of hierarchy and power. Here, I view the sacred in the sense of an entitlement to reverence and respect, something highly valued, and something that allows us to bring focused attention to a particular moment. Think of some things in your life that provide tremendous value. I would venture to say that many of those items were purchased with excitement and even brought a few minutes of contentment, but without ongoing attention, that contentment quickly disappeared. The stanza exploring the brewing of coffee is a call to be in full awareness of the things, events, and people in our lives. Deep awareness is what brings contentment that we can continually come back to.

Bitter, delicious coffee
brewed in the same manner 
as yesterday,
except today it is not 
for a burst of energy
but simply to prepare
the common filter
with a sacrament,
dark grind immersed
in clear spiraling streams
and a black waterfall
crashing into the pool below,
to savor the message
from the earth
You Are
fire settling into the tongue.

This stanza ends with a message emerging out of the awareness that created this sacred moment. This message is “You Are” and is meant as an extension of the “I Am” found in various Abrahamic traditions, which is often positioned as what God called himself as a way to explain what could not be explained. I first tasted what this phrase means experientially during a meditation session, interestingly with more of a Dzogchen leaning, where an experience of non-separation emerged for what I believe was just a few brief seconds. Quickly this idea of I Am seemed so real and powerful, all-inclusive and completely universal. This message is a giving from the source that we share, the I Am telling each of us You Are, a gift allowing us to know that we are also made from and of this source.

Finally, we see a picture of early dawn where stars are still shining and there is a glow on the horizon that slowly spreads upwards overtaking the stars. It is one of my favorite times of day to witness, and I hope the few words dedicated to this daily event provided a glimpse of awe. Awe seems to commonly be a state that provides a taste of the unity that the individual in the poem was offered in the prior stanza. Ultimately, that is the picture the first half of this stanza paints, culminating with the words and head cast high // into swaying branches. This individual no longer finds themselves an individual, separate from the stars and the sky and the trees, but they are cast into it and become part of it. They no longer need to feel separate from the rest of the world.

I walk outside 
into morning darkness 
that reveals my soul
through specks of starlight
succumbing to the glow of dawn,
first glimpsed
in the outer 
reach of trees
and head cast high
into swaying branches.
Fertile green summer
fades into dryness
finished with diligent effort
and forward into vibrancy
that reflects on its harvest,
then gives itself
into a final release
of rusted leaves
offered to all
no matter their harvest.

The stanza concludes with a sentence that describes the final progression from summer to fall, what I see as a transition from seasons of production to seasons of simply being. This is a rhythm that is offered to everyone, regardless of how productive they have been, what their title is, what their bank account states and what others view as someone’s contribution, or lack of, to the world. After all, we find ourselves exactly where we are not so much as a result of our individual effort, but as a result of what we do with what the world has handed us because we are human in our particular place and time. Our efforts only emerge because of this gift. Let us set our egos aside and pick up our identity as intertwined.

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Finally, and as always, poetry is meant to move your mind and your heart. The themes that I shared in this reflection are what spoke to me while and after writing. If different themes came to you, that is great! I would love to hear them, please comment! Let poetry speak to you in whatever way it chooses to. The life there is just as true as anything anyone can put on paper.

May your life transitions be met with ease.

Brian

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If you missed the “A Poem” post of Autumn sigh, I hope you will read and enjoy! You can find it here.

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