The sycamore behind the farmhouse has been raining leaves for a few weeks now. I watch them fall, tumble, catch and whirl as they obey but still tease gravity. They are fairy dust or golden promises or gifts from the Great Good Hand dancing just for me. 
In college, I walked from Climenhaga Fine Arts Center to the library on fall afternoons. My heart was cracked apart, just beginning to scar over, and those quiet walks – between class and work – were my balm. One day, I stopped and picked up the leaves of a sugar maple, 4 of them, perfect in their difference, red and yellow and the tints of brown. I tucked one into my hair behind my right ear. The others I held softly in my hands, gifts for my fellow writing tutors. There was healing in that giving, the first I was able to do in a while.
Here in this quiet space of autumn, where even my words seem spangled with the colors of the sun, I am quieted by my choices – choices to focus on the leaves and the dance and the words, choices to turn away from my desire to type out politics and anger, choices to give my time, my energy, even my anger to the page.
I have but so much time, so much energy – between the leaf tugging free and the laying down on grass – and I want to give that to writing and loving, baking heavy wheat bread and looping small animals, holding hands and walking through the leaves as they grace my hair again.
I want to give it to dancing out the words with abandon, all twirl and drift, all giving in. All love.