Russet

I'm cutting into Winter in rude health, mobile, willing and motivated. Of course I'd rather be peering into a wine bottle but you can't have it every way. Isn't it an odd time though? In the last weeks bringing home pumpkins, soon to be Jack o' lanterns, surrounded by the sweet kick of huge apples in the background. Or enjoying the multi-rust carnage of the woods, watching as it all falls. I could do a poor-man's Shakespeare and compare the slow and beautiful decay to our own; of how I watched my Mother watching me as I climbed the ladder to harvest the crab apple tree at her house, feeling the moment slip by in total irony. But there is nothing in that scene that can't be better said in silence. It's not a season, it's a sense. And it should be a sense of your own self worth, as well as a timely reminder. I don't see it as a chance for one last cigarette as I sweep up the leaves in the gathering howl of dusk. I can't help but drink in the light and the chance to slow down a little imposed on us by nature. It's only a short, beautiful season, not long in the scheme of things. The mathematical buckos [first Irish builders] that knocked Newgrange together knew what it all meant. From December 21st it all widens out from quiet to a Springtime and Summer riot and then all the way back in again. Reeled in like a Marlin in the Gulf Stream. Its a beautiful, slowing time. Listen to what it says. Regroup, re-examine, relive, return.