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Golden light of the morning sun illuminates a cascade of yellow leaves in a shattering, shimmering curtain encircling a maroon red startle of maple amid a chorus of green and brown leaves, all shaking and dancing in the sea breeze blowing up from Buzzards Bay, their rustle playing through the bramble and branch on its way here, to my back deck, situated ever so precariously on a wee hillside forest punctuated with windfall and red berries, and looking over the detritus of my late-fall worn-out eastern garden.

I go out there in the mornings just to sweep away the dead leaves, then do some dexterity practice and warm-up scales, stretching one leg then the other, and circling arms and legs through great windmill circles of breath, tasting the slightly musty autumn air as chilled breath energy circulates through every channel and I breathe it back out, hotter.

And when golden leaves rain down now and then when a breeze picks up the breath and I feel it, inside, like a letting go of the old, like a retired burden left to drift down the creek of time, like farewells, some sweet, some bitter, some full of sighs of relief. And then I pick up the broom and start slowly down the ancient stone steps towards the garden, sweeping, and I see a perfectly round spider web shimmering in the glint.