Passer Mortuus Est

My neighbor is cutting trees this morning in the woods to the east of me. First the sound of his chainsaw and then the crack, and creak and crash of the falling trunks. Last weekend after dark I heard the same crack, creak and crash from the other direction. I knew just which tree it was: an old elm that has been dead for a few years. There was one big branch that had fallen and had been propped upside down on a lower limb, and the last supporting fiber must have given way.

I don't mourn the loss of the trees; we have plenty of trees here. It is the nature of trees, and the nature of every living thing, to live, to grow, age and die and fall. It is Nature's lesson that life goes on in changed forms.

I do feel the onset of mourning for what I have had of summer this year. I have that white sky feeling of waiting, waiting. I know that the changing leaves

(so early this year!) indicate their small individual deaths, and not Death. Winter will come and spring will come.

I wait.