You find yourself out in the depths of a moonless night Without the moon the stars are diamond bright And the sky is inky and deep There's a new chill in the air As the season turns firmly towards the darkness The veils between what is known and what is unknown are thin The air is thick The memories of the past Unformed dreams of the future In this thick air,
Boundaries of your body become permeable You don't know where the darkness within begins and ends And where it becomes the darkness without your sense of yourself gently blurs in the darkness The spirits of the past swoop in And in your bones Through the soles of your bare feet on the cold earth You know the feet of those who walked before you You know those who are buried beneath you For these moments let yourself be moved by those who have come before Let yourself be inhabited by their wordless knowing Let your body move and let it be moved by the ancient earth beneath With every moment let the wisdom of the moving body sink deeper in To meet the ancestral wisdom already in your bones Let yourself be strengthened right to the very core So the rest of yourself can melt and merge with the darkness all around So your body has had its fill for now Let yourself come to stillness And as you do,
Come aware of the chill on your skin The animal urge to hibernate To find a place to rest and bring yourself To a place in front of a mighty old tree Shaped dim in the darkness Imagine you find a way to slip inside this tree Find a place for yourself To burrow,
To nestle down into Let yourself sink deeper into this new mushroomy darkness inside the tree And as you nestle deeper into your resting place The boundaries begin to blur further and further Until you are more tree than you are human Legs and body become trunk and roots Skin becomes bark Arms become branches Fingertips become tiny twigs Reaching out into the sky And at the end of these fingertips You feel the last smatterings of the summer's growth of leaves The last few leaves just holding on to the very tips of your branches Feel those leaves that were once lush and green And now Shocking array of bright,
Dying autumn colours Yellow,
Gold,
Brown,
Red Your fingertips The last glorious fireworks show of the year And as these leaves flutter in the autumn wind Let yourself follow the fate of one of them Feel as the back and forth Side to side This way and that motion of the wind Loosens the grip Until finally the last thread that attaches leaf to branch to trunk and roots Breaks and the leaf flies free You feel it dance with the air in a flurry of freedom You feel yourself and the leaf Part of a dizzying whirl Freedom of falling Of not knowing which way the wind will take you The feet of the tree that bore you And as you feel yourself settling in a carpet of brightness with all the other leaves that have now found their place to rest functions
