I can’t shake the November state of mind today. The lowering skies, the gusting winds. The pond and the rake. The maple tree that has grown for 12 years along the south side of the water has that fatal illness of maples, with black rings inside its branches. This is the last year I will stare into its red lanterns in the summer afternoons, and sift its colors from tangled lillies and gravel in late Autumn.

On a recent aftrnoon the light fell in such a way that it looked like this, like a cliff, and an abyss, and a refuge, that crack in Leonard Cohen’s wonderful bell, the dark and somber and jubilant Anthem:

     Ring the bells that still can ring
     Forget your perfect offering
     There is a crack, a crack in everything
     That’s how the light gets in