As autumn deepens, humans move into what yoga therapist Anne Pitman calls “the endarkenment”—a time of year when it’s okay to acknowledge mortality. This poem is my take on that subject. I wrote it on a sunny afternoon in October, proving that what’s going on in “the world” need not reflect the inner truth of human experience.

I wrote this poem in June 2019 on a day when holding my breath helped to connect me to a living being that came from the sky and happened to share, as Leonard Cohen says, a flake of my life. And like many flakes, this one was precious. Photo from Shutterstock.

He is the one and only Daniel, the person I married in 1989. The poem I offer here captures a moment when I saw, with great clarity, how he has truly left the working world behind. Photo by me. Birch trees by the Creator.

I’ve been studying Buddhism since I was 15 years old, and meditating for about 30 years. I do not belong to a particular sangha, just to the general hoi polloi of unwashed humanity. Photo credit: Shutterstock