The poets say the heart is right to cry when even the smallest drop of love, of light, is taken away. Today I saw the roses, some of the first flowers we planted in our new gardens, begin to die. We’ve had a couple of soft frosts and I see the light in the flowers is beginning to fade, the color and light is about to be taken away. Fall foliage is a time of wondrous color here, but I am not fooled by the richness of the color – it means color and light, so important to me and my imagination, are dying and will be reborn next Spring.

For me, as a writer and a photographer and human being, this is a spiritual and emotional challenge, I love by color and light, it empowers and sustains me. I will find other sources of inspiration, other things to sustain me, and if color and light is dying, then love, the brightest light of all, continues. Crisis and mystery, birth and rebirth, life and death.