October, 2025
It’s autumn in Vermont. The colors in my neck-of-the-woods are not as vibrant as they’ve been in past years. Neither am I. My “leaves” are not as golden or fiery as they once were. There is less risk in my days, more caution. Once upon a time I thought I could leap tall buildings, now I grip the banister as I walk up and down the staircase. My sight and hearing are not what they were but my vision is clearer and listening skills sharper. I’ve had a lifetime of experience, and I hope that I’ve accrued a lifetime of wisdom.
In the twilight of my life I find unexpected moments of peaceful solitude, a quiet reverie in these shorter days and longer nights. The fading of summer’s warm embracing light gives way to teasing shifts in weather, a harbinger of winter’s chill and darkness. I enjoy this season for its defining transitions: the warmth to cold, light to dark, bright to griege, and for me a segue-time from doing that settles into being.
Excerpts from John Keats poem, “To Autumn,” capture some of what I feel:
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-Friend of the maturing sun;
…with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozing hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—”
I pause to look beyond the computer screen on which my words appear to the wall lined with bookshelves across the room. The tattered leather-bound copy of the King James Version of the Bible, the one my grandfather gave me when I graduated from high school, captures my attention.I loved my grandfather, and although he was intimidating to some, including other family members, he was kind and patient with me. However, his hellfire and brimstone preaching manifested itself in his instructions to me. He often cited Proverbs 7:9 where Solomon advises a young man to beware of twilight, where sins abide in the shadows.
To the left of The King James Bible is The Complete Works of Shakespeare edited by Hardin Craig. Their revered side-by-side place, among books with literary and sentimental value, stands out because both have spines held together with duct tape. The word twilight is used nine to twenty-five times in the Bible and only once in all of Shakespeare’s works. That occurs in Sonnet LXXIII:
“That time of year thou mayest in me behold
When yellow leaves, or more, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day…”
I have miles to go before my final rest, and in that journey more autumns, more twilights. My faith, often riddled with doubts and questions, is girded by the hope that beyond this prelude of Shakespearean twilight time, the Great Mystery will reveal even greater beauty and magic.
by 
