“Beings Trees in Autumn
These trees in Buddhist saffron robes renouncing everything,
becoming naked without fear,
in win that is a part of them, disclose a beauty in this death, become new shapes, interior.
To live they cannot hoard;
This losing, too, is growth.
New shapes emerge, new vision clears. Surrender strengthens in the soul another song.This emptying is confidence
in springs, but more-a farthing in the growth that’s come before, a counting of the gifts
and then releasing one by one, so as to give again,
Knowing growth is not a season, but is in the root of things.
This is no losing,
but a becoming.
Coveting such openness
of limb and heart and hand, such bareness in the singing,
I only now discover that I want this wind, blowing where it will, within.”

“Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.”

“But to Ezail, gifted with acceptance, it was only another facet of the riotous marvel of the earth. For all was marvelous there, was and is still, but humanity becomes inured to repetitive amazements - that the sun may rise, that a tiny seed may become a tree or a man, that life, coming from nowhere, sets us to moving like clockwork, and going out again leaves us to sleep. Or else, as then, takes us away with it, who knows? But we are used to it all, dawn and growth, living and dying. It takes a dragon on houseroof to wake us up now - and then, too. But to Ezail, all was wonder and no single item more than another: Dawns and dragons were one.”

“Spiritual growth involves giving up the stories of your past so the universe can write a new one.”

“The thing about trees is that they know what to do. When a leaf loses its colour, it's not because its time is up and it's dying, it's because the tree is taking back into itself the nutrients the leaf's been holding in reserve for it, out there on the twig, and why leaves change colour in autumn is because the tree is preparing for winter, it's filling itself with its own stored health so it can withstand the season. Then, clever tree, it literally pushes the used leaf off with the growth that's coming behind it. But because that growth has to protect itself through winter too, the tree fills the little wound in its branch or twig where the leaf was with a protective corky stuff which seals it against cold and bacteria. Otherwise every leaf lost would be an open wound on a tree and a single tree would be covered in thousands of little wounds. Clever trees.”

“Except. What is normal at any given time? We change just as the seasons change, and each spring brings new growth. So nothing is ever quite the same.”