Today is such a ripe peach of autumn. The day is warm and sunny. Many of our trees have shed a goodly portion of their leaves, though I am waiting for the maple by the fence to begin turning. Still, brown, yellow and red foliage clings like so many survivors of a shipwreck, and at every moment another one drifts on the tide. Magpies and cockatoos inspect the fallen, fling them with their beaks, then march on.

I have always thought autumn is the most glorious time to be alive. If life were to have any glory, then this would it, and who could complain. Sure summer and spring get all the attention - they are the sexy seasons apparently - but my heart is in the fall. 

I was reading Mary Oliver's lovely "The Summer Day", though this might seem an odd place to bring it up, when the last two lines reminded me of another poem, though I could not bring the title to mind.

"Tell me, what is it that you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

It is not a sentiment reserved only for summer, rather for any time when you are deep in reflection, or engaged very much in the moment. What a world of tiresome distractions we live in, where the act of living is constantly upended by trivia and its accursed bedfellows!

I am not sure what I will do with the remainder of my 'wild and precious life' though it is food for yet more thought. I won't procrastinate, just abide with that which comes and goes, time's endless little deliveries.