How It Happens

You'd think we'd feel more energized with the clocks all set back but I sure didn't. Not yesterday anyway, even BEFORE the sun started setting at 4  - or was it 3:00? Was that twilight I saw at 2pm?  All I know is I panicked and fled, packed my bags and drove two hours in hopes of what? Outrunning darkness?I serve on the board of my town’s Multicultural Network and our big Annual Retreat/Workshop took place this past weekend. This meant I sat in a circle in a folding chair on Friday night from 6 to 9 and again all day Saturday. David, meanwhile, was up at our summer place raking leaves and dragging in kayaks. “Don’t bother coming, T," he told me. “I’ll be home by noon Sunday and it’s a long drive for you to begin upon at 5pm.”It turned out to be much later than that when I began upon it and the road all dark before me. It still seemed  like a good though because I pictured that we'd have this bright clear day and even sleep over Sunday night and what an adventure that would be! And with the clocks turned back we’d wake easily at 5 and be home by 8, even allowing for the slow  flow of traffic back toward the city on a Monday.But Sunday's skies were cloudy and when I tuned into the Weather Channel and saw high winds, rain, and snow predicted for today I lost all hope. I climbed back into the same car I had climbed out of just 18 hours before and drove the hundred miles home.So here I awoke in the land of my many obligations with rain hammering at the window panes and the remaining leaves swirling like crazy dancers. All weekend I felt a sadness, coming as I now see, from both the sudden loss of light and the more gradual loss of the bright green life that has been ours since April.There's a poem called "How It Happens" by W. S. Merwyn, former Poet Laureate and author of “The Shadow of Sirius,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2009. I offer it here to match the day:

The sky said I am watchingto see what youcan make out of nothingI was looking up and I saidI thought youwere supposed to be doing thatthe sky said Manyare clinging to thatI am giving you a chanceI was looking up and I saidI am the only chance I havethen the sky did not answerand here we arewith our names for the daysthe vast days that do not listen to us

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