DANCE IN RED

Now that we in all our autumn doings tend to turn inward, away from the importances that nourish the roots of our going on - that permit us to be - now that nearly all the rice has been harvested, now that farmers too are busy indoors and their fields lie empty, bleakly shorn, puddles of mud and scattered chaff lying fallow as even the weeds themselves begin to lie down and the flowerless air to chill, on slender green leafless stems rise the elegant gestures of higanbana (Lycoris radiata – Spider Lily), each red blossom part of the bright ballet now dancing across the fields from out of the ground: one morning there they are, rising in the light, you never know where a new scarlet cluster will show up or how the flowers get around (since they make no seeds) but now they are dancing to the wind's music even on our recently reorganized mountainside, where they gesture in their red clouds along the untrammeled streambanks, reminding us that we have reached the turning point, the time of equinox, when the silent skyhinge swings us and all into winter and future: we've made it this far we're reminded by this red dance of velvet gestures, randomly presented about the landscape, though most impressively where the earth has lain untended, for nature dances best where humankind least sets foot…