Autumn

I’ve just had a lovely chat with a grasshopper. He didn’t have much time to talk, what with his busy traveling schedule and all, but the few minutes we did share were quite delightful. He was wearing his best green tweed vest and pants with a beautiful iridescent shirt: very dapper and yet sensible. Tweed is just the thing for the changing weather in these early, beguiling days of autumn.

He had caught my eye as he hurriedly hopped down the sidewalk trying to flee me, the giant seemingly coming after him! Had I only had a chance to tell him not to worry. My intent was much more mundane than to stamp on a fellow traveler; I was just on my way to get the mail.

We headed down the walk a little further and he attempted to jump a small brick retaining wall which held back green grass offering the safety of camouflage. He tried twice then three times to propel himself up and over with those thin, powerful legs but with no success. It was the gold ring on the merry-go-round: enticingly close but just out of reach. So, there he sat on the cement awaiting his doom.

I squatted down beside him to get a better look at this heralder of fall and he took the moment to catch his breath. After a minute of rest where I got to see the finery of his suit up close, his breathing slowed. I wondered what I, and really, the rest of the world looked like to him through those multi-faceted dark eyes.

“In all the things of nature there is something of the marvelous.” – Aristotle

At this point a small black ant wandered unknowingly into our scene and marched toward the hind end of the grasshopper. I couldn’t see the particulars of the encounter but knew when the ant had found its way up to him because with one quick flick of a leg the ant was propelled in a new trajectory.

I thought I was the observer in this story until the grasshopper turned his head and looked up at me. Then, keeping his eyes fixed on me, he gently rocked to the left and then to the right. He repeated this process three more times… left then right, left then right. His meditative movements reminded me of t’ai chi, which I have just begun to learn, but what was he really doing? Ah ha! He was judging the distance to his next landing which, as it turns out, was the coat that I had draped over my arm!

Where his sidewalk performance was less than artful (really fringe) and very tumultuous (he hit his head no less than twice on the brick retaining wall seemingly without consequence!?), in the blink of an eye he alighted to my blue-green tweed coat. He paused for just a moment and then quietly and easily moved up my arm as if to say ‘Oh yes, I take this walk daily. It’s very nice- you’ll like it.’

When he got to the edge of the coat he surveyed the new horizon which included my sweater with its zigzag of blue stripes. Yeowza! Talk about your busy intersection! But he was unflappable: he’d been in the big city before and was used to the noise.

For a brief moment we rested there together, he and I. Then, as if he heard the conductor calling out his train’s departure, he fixed his eyes on the green horizon, gently rocked left then right to get his bearings and made a long, swift jump to a tall blade of grass. It was a perfect landing.

I bid my new friend a fond farewell, thanked him for his time and wished him safe journey wherever he was going. Then I left the long, low shadows of the late day and went in to get my mail.

Wishing you the beauty and abundance of the season,
Karen