MORTALITY

Our usual warm-weather-low-humidity has turned like a child looks back to see if someone familiar is near. In the Pacific NW rain magically ceases soon after Fourth of July and doesn’t reappear until late September/October. But our light sweater July evenings have dissolved into two days of November downpour and I feel cheated. Where has summer gone? Will it reappear?

Our yucca plants produced their white bell blossoms early and with extravagance. They were glorious for days, reluctantly dropping petals as they dried on the stock. Our neighbors’ plants were not so long enjoyed. The rain force bent the stems or denuded them. Their short season concluded face down in the mulch.

Unseasonable weather reminds me of a metaphor hidden in an Asian figure:

Talk about tomorrow
the rats will laugh

Assuming, hoping against hope, continuing in spite of, planning with no guarantees, are conditions of our mortality amid storm-beaten flowers, nurturing rain, changeable weather systems.  
In front of the wooden yucca stocks, the iris greenery feed their tubers. Spiking gladiolas are turning a shade of coral I would not have chosen. Mortality and death are complicated subjects. 

Reluctance
by Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?