Transformative Wind

A multilayered point in the year: the weather has been saturated, warm, and when I first titled this post some time ago there had been thick, blowy, thunderstorm winds, tangible wind, thick wind, wind you could hold in your hand like dough.
Then came the days of popping color, the road to home with its overhanging beeches and maples in their autumn green and gold, like driving into magic, a path I've taken in white blinding snow and through these leaves, so many years now, following toward home.
Rain, rain and then this late afternoon in the hollow of the graveyard, looking up its hills, I saw how the branches are now bare, charcoal sketchmarks against the horizontal wash of sunset colors.
For the first time surrounded by the winter horizon, knowing again how much I love the months where the shapes of the trees are revealed -- not too much, really, about those months, but that -- earth bones revealed.
But just the other night the crickets woke and sang, we shed our coats and shoes, and today I ran onto the sodden lawn, barefoot, to play with the dog.
Summer's remnant, somnolent but still a presence, the crest of fall, life imbued with death, and now, winter's look.

Swallows and Dragonflies

Last week it was the swallows, flying in over the harbor to flutter down on trees in the scrubby bay side of the beach, singly and in twos and threes, swooping in from across the water and over the road where I stood, watching. Other people walked, biked, drove by without seeming to notice, or did not stop. There were hundreds of birds, trees-full, settled for a moment until, by silent code, all would alight, wing once or twice around, tracing arcs, and then group together to settle again. Head tipped back, transfixed, of course I thought of "The Birds," and how Tippi Hedren ran, children in hand, heads bowed, screaming, as the birds flew in to peck. These swallows -- I called them swifts, the word just seemed right, but learned later they were tree swallows -- had that strength in numbers, power to make all of those oblivious beachgoers take note, but did not feel menacing at all.

This week there are dragonflies, hurrying in wide circles around the yard outside my kitchen door, where once before I sat surrounded by a swarm of them, something of a totem for me. I've found their bodies before and saved their clear, veined wings, ephemeral things with more strength than I may ever summon.
It's dizzying, chaotic, trying to follow them in the oncoming twilight, keep them in focus, in view, their hurried and effortless loops tipping vertically and horizontally like intertwined circus hoops.

There's nothing to do but sit here in the midst of them despite any other plans. I know I'm just by happenstance in the midst of whatever fall business they're about, just like the swallows were stopping off along the bay beach, serendipitously, when I was, too.
But both moments feel like blessed visitations to me.