final days

The scene along the Alaskan Way Viaduct looked much like it does in the picture this morning as I motored south, making my one significant commute of the week, to teach yoga in Normandy Park. As the autumn sun lit up the white trellises of Safeco Field and sprinkled the water of Elliot Bay with blindingly bright sparklers, I couldn't help reflecting that this is the last of this we'll see for a while. The forecast is for sunshine and 60-degree temperatures for the next two days; after that the winter glurk sets in for the foreseeable future.

I've accepted as well that I'm in the autumn of my life, and that the joys and passions of youth are never coming back, for better and for worse. And likewise, the weary earth spins toward the grand finale of our species' dominance of the stage. The play won't end here of course; there was another act with other players before us and there'll surely be others to follow. But those things may as well not exist for as much as they concern us.

Meanwhile, the air is clean and bright for those still able to breathe it. The weary land still gives us food crops every year -- the abused mother still caring for her children. The songs of the bright denizens of the trees still pierce the quiet afternoon hours, though there are significantly fewer of them than in past times, and they are gradually replaced by the crows, who come dressed in mourning for the passing age.