Drifting Veils of Morning

One of those nebulous autumn mornings when skies are overcast, and the village is cloaked and mysterious...  The earth is warmer than the air, and the meeting of the two elements turns otherwise mundane landscape features like power lines, vehicles, houses and hydro towers into entities fey and luminous.

I almost typed "early autumn" in the preceding paragraph, but as of the equinox a few days ago, autumn is properly upon us, and she is comfortable in her tenure of mist, rain, wind and madcap tumbling leaves.

Fog swirls around everything in billowing waves, draping trees like a veil, smoothing hard edges and rounding the contours of house and street. The wind has been scouring leaves from the trees near home, and they lie deep and rustling underfoot as Spencer and I go along on our morning walks. Out of the pearly gray and the sepia comes a sound now and again: rain on the roof of the little blue house, village doors opening and closing as sleepy residents collect their newspapers, the muffled purring of autos, an early commuter detouring through the park, children walking to school, a caroling bird in the hedgerow, the whistle of a faraway train that is usually only a faint echoing in the air.

On such mornings, the world seems to go on and on forever and be filled with a luminous floating Zen possibility, soil and sky and mist giving tongue to a language that is wild and compelling.  Part of me is curled up and engaged in a breathing meditation, counting my slow breaths in and out. The other parts are drifting along with the fog and happy to be doing it.