Hello, God, It's me, Mara - November

You know, Lord, November has sneaked right in! Time sure does seem to fly around here - that's what a host of friends say. Looking out the window or taking a walk, one can't help but notice the falling leaves which seem to be the business that November is doing. Oh, there are some leaves that dangled on a naked branch and refuse to fall until spring comes along and thrusts them off to make way for the greenery of the year born new.

Cottonwoods change from their shiny green glittering like metallic leaves to the washed-out yellow like faded sunlight but they hold on, answering to the wind and are quite disinclined to be still or to be thrust away. Nonetheless, one after another these leaves     let go, their weakened fingers having lost their grip and courage and then, here is November stripping the Cottonwoods to the skin like a naked swimmer. Then November winds use the bare twigs like the strings of a harp on which to make November threnody - a wailing ode - or a dirge - a sad hymn of mourning.

Going for a walk we see full colors of falling leaves, full of precious odors. What used to be a cloud now comes to be a coverlid, what used to whisper "Like the music of seas far away," is now the rustling of walking feet of men. We hear the rusty-voice of our footsteps and imagine the rustling feet of deer or rabbits or the pranking, tricking feet of the wild wind and we hear the clicking tread of quail coveys; oh, so much color and sound that the trained eye hardly can tell a bird from a leaf save that the bird flutters above the fluttering leaves. 

How great and awesome You are, Lord, as You sit above the vault of the earth to observe all that You have created.

Love Mara