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Shadow Shot Sunday 2: Almost Autumn
Macro Monday 2: Autumn Leaves
October: A Wilderness Walk
October. The month of the dead and the dying.
As I shuffle through the arroyo, I keep dropping to my knees. An onlooker might mistake me for a pilgrim making my painful way to Lourdes. But the healing I seek cannot be found at some distant, holy shrine. It is here in the dust at my feet: palo verde twigs snapped off by windstorms; brown clumps of parched grasses; and small stones quickly losing their warmth as the daylight fades.
I pause before some tattered sunflowers, bleached and bitten by the unforgiving desert sun, to quench my thirst. Words from a letter written long ago come to mind: “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are…” (1 Corinthians 1:28, Revised Standard Version).
Low and despised is nature’s detritus in the wilderness, but it heals my battered spirit as I kneel in awe and wonder before it.
While three crows argue,
I gulp tea from my thermos—
autumn’s first chill wind.
Shadow Shot Sunday 2: Autumn Shadows
Macro Monday 2: Leaf
Haiku My Heart: Blaze

A car’s side mirror reflects autumn colors, Inyo National Forest near Bishop, California
forward or backward
a blaze lights up the mountain—
autumn afternoon
Haiku and photo © 2017 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More SkyWatch Friday
More Shadow Shot Sunday 2
Blaze

Animas River near Cedar Hill, San Juan County, New Mexico
Autumn by autumn
a blaze along the river
outshines every sun.
Haiku © 2017 and photo © 2013 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More SkyWatch Friday
More Haiku My Heart at Recuerda Mi Corazon
More Midweek Motif at Poets United: “Autumn”
Sunflowers

Robert J. Moody Demonstration Garden, Yuma, Arizona
Deepening autumn—
the dowdy old sunflowers
put on their last show.
Haiku and photo © 2017 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More Macro Monday 2
More Midweek Motif at Poets United: “Autumn”
Knife

Jim Harrison’s final book of poems, Dead Man’s Float
Light from the window
knifes Jim Harrison’s poems
this autumn morning.
Haiku and photo © 2017 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More Haiku My Heart at Recuerda Mi Corazon
Dowdy

Robert J. Moody Demonstration Garden, Yuma, Arizona
First week of autumn—
the dowdy old sunflowers
put on their last show.
Haiku and photo © 2017 by Magical Mystical Teacher
More Haiku My Heart at Recuerda Mi Corazon