Winter reveals more than it conceals

I realized this walking through Inwood Park today.  As the leaves fall more becomes visible - the structures that underlie what is clothed in warmer times.  Those are the rocks and there is the contour of the hill, now you can see the water from further away.

The cold ground and all the loss brings clarity.  Isn't it true...of grieving and so much more.  Or as Rumi says:

Sorrows are the rags of old clothes
and jackets that serve to cover,
and then are taken off.
That undressing,
and the beautiful
naked body
                     underneath,
                                  is the sweetness
                                                that comes
                                                        after grief.


Here, now, there are still small riots of color here and there, little drops and bursts, all the more beautiful for the grey or darkness surrounding them.  Then there is the ground of leaves.

I found bits of this in Maine, too, even though it had already snowed - bright red apples clinging to trees, the slant of afternoon light on the pond just so - crimson orange if there is such a thing.

It's all about the colors today, so will give more space to photos than words.  One note though, when I stopped to take the photo below with a bird next to the pink roses, two birds flew in to be in the picture.  Only in NYC, I thought, will you find birds trying to upstage another bird in a photo.

But here, too, the people on the benches just looking out at the water, or walking through the darkening woods, happy just to be alive, smiling as we do at each other, nodding, an acknowledgement - yes, here we are, yes it is beautiful even if it's no longer redorangegold.  It's something else beautiful.  Nodding again to one another as if to say: yes, I see that, too.  I am also glad to be alive, grateful to have found time during a day to walk in this end of fall into winter day.  To see the last colors, to acknowledge what is passing away.  To simply breathe.  To know we are always already passing away.  Yes.  But we are also here now.  Yes.  Where yoga meets Derrida.  Yes.

scene stealing birds below the one on top - or perhaps they are spear carriers

Maine - near my parents' place - yes the red things are apples in tree

pond outside their house