Today, darkness and light stand in perfect balance.
The sun crosses Earth’s center line. We pause for a day, suspended between summer’s exhale and winter’s sharp inhale.
Half a year ago, this same angle coaxed purple crocuses to pierce the last snow. I watched them unfold against white. Lilies nodded in the raw wind. Periwinkle and buttercups scattered yellow across the valley floor. But the deer moved through my yard on unsteady legs, ribs sharp beneath winter-dulled coats. Flower petals did little to fill their hollowed stomachs after the long, lean months.
Now, the forest has gathered summer’s light into its arms. Where flowers once quivered on thin stems, abundance now weighs down every branch. Acorns rain onto the earth. Black walnuts fall like stones. Berries hang heavy, their tartness gentled into dark sweetness by the heat. Fox grapes cascade purple from the thicket. Crabapples bend their branches toward breaking. The white stars of dogwood spring have ripened into berries red as the cardinals perched among them.
Spring dresses the world in flowers. Autumn fills its pockets with gifts.
Inside each seed, another spring waits. The forest has packed sunshine into ten thousand parcels—berries for birds, acorns for squirrels, wild turnip roots for deer to scratch from the frozen ground. Through the cold months ahead, this captured light will pass from body to body, warming blood and bone. What falls uneaten will sink into the soil, patient for resurrection.
After today’s sunset, daylight retreats. Each dawn arrives later. Each dusk, sooner.
Yet this brings no sorrow. Deer grow fat on autumn’s bounty. Squirrels bury treasure in soft earth—unwitting gardeners planting tomorrow’s forest with what they forget. Even the trees, having returned what they borrowed from sun and soil, stand easy in their rest.
From my window, I watch the world release its hold—acorn by acorn, leaf by yellowing leaf. This is what grace looks like: the open palm.
The fruit, not the flower.
The letting go.
The Fall.