It would be difficult not to contemplate endings at this time of year. And yet, it was at autumn equinox seventeen years ago on a Saturday that I began my life in Ireland. Cycles of birth, growth, death, and renewal define life and living. There is a time for everything Ecclesiastes would remind us. The truth is that season’s turn, just as the tides do. Everyone has their time of endings before there can renewal.

Equinoxes, like the solstices, are liminal times in the wheel of the year. Equinoxes are, to me at least, moments where we stand right on the threshold. It is the half and half point between light and darkness. We have not committed to going out or staying in. Nothing is quite at an end. But then neither can anything quite begin.

So, to the daily poetry practice. These were my scales played this morning.

“The End”

comes right after
the “happily ever after.”
(Now, take a bow!)
The proscenium curtain
creaks and sweeps down.
Only the stage’s work lamp
is left on.

The blank stage
inanimate, set broken down,
the show rolled up.
The blank page,
the before to the afterwards,
with only the work lamp
left on.

Copyright 2018 Bee Smith