The Passing of Autumn

"There's no love like the hour, and when noise swirls in the world,  it's the companionship of breath  which saves souls with its being"   We are blessed that seasons - and the seasons of our lives - are marked by the pomp and grace of festivities. We welcome and we let go, we conjoin and we celebrate. And in both the comings and goings, we are left forever changed.   What is it about the passages of rituals that we are never left unmoved? As if it is not just Diwali or Id or Christmas, but an important rite of passage, which even if bereft of its symbolism and allegory, becomes the time to come together, to revel in something essential inside us, which often lasts dormant, but finds an awakening and leaves us rejuvenated.   But even more than that, these marks in the calendar, these pauses, are rewinds to simpler feelings, as we find meaning in the ‘again’. The times when loved ones got together, to swap tales, to intertwine lives, to revisit old joys - and often festering wounds. It is the time to exchange familiarity and at least THINK of forgiveness as an option, to at least remember that seeking unfiltered joy is nothing but the soul aching for a return to innocence.   In the liturgy of our lives, this is the familial moment - private with those who care, festive with those we revel in, revealing with those who are tender with our softest parts, and being a different person to ourselves. More than opening up, we involuntarily crack open.  We are better for just being.   And then the aftermath. The unwinding, the closures - and the closing up. As if the festival was an event and not something which changed Iives. Something which we carried as a memory which mixed with other similar memories of revelry and became generic rather than being tagged as the time when we sprouted flowers from the cesspool of our deepest selves. We could well be the goddess left adrift in uncertain currents or a fir tree abandoned in a mothballed  attic till another season.   Or we could let the passage of the days go right through us. Without making us feel abandoned as detritus but helping us blunt the shards of our hurts with unquestioning presence.   Deep inside, we are ever so often only the hurt child who finds solace in an abandoned church, realising in time, that god also fought battles in the universe, and the church was also his resting place.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the hurt and glory of seasons - • Dancing in the Rains • Waiting for a Storm • Those Days of a Lost Summer Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: Majestic Autumn by MusicLFiles
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9662-majestic-autumn
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles