Counting absences
Days without red-winged blackbirds
Autumn samadhi

Bill Felker

EPHEMERIS FOR THE SECOND WEEK OF LATE FALL
The Second Spring Moon, full on the 13th, wanes throughout the period, entering its dark, final quarter on November 19 at 4:31 p.m. Rising in the evening and setting near midday, the waning moon lies overhead before sunrise.
By the middle of November’s third week, the sun passes a declination of 18 degrees, and reaches three-fourths of the way to winter solstice. The Leonids mark that solar movement, crossing Leo after midnight on the 17th and 18th.

COUNTING ABSENCES
The inventory of middle autumn at the end of October is rich in foliage and color, but the settling in of late autumn draws down the density and texture of the canopy and strips away almost all the floral barriers to winter. As spring overcomes February and March with an accumulation of new growth, fall spreads across the summer with an accumulation of loss.
One enumeration of late fall is the counting of what no longer holds, a counting of emptiness or absences, cued only by memory and the more durable, woody scaffolding that binds the seasons:
Foliage of apple trees and crab apple trees, ginkgoes, sugar maples, trees of heaven, redbuds, black walnuts, catalpas, box elders, locusts, elms, birches, poplars, cottonwoods, peach trees, cherry trees, Osage, red oaks, white oaks, chinquapin oaks sycamores, red mulberries, sweet gums, silver maples, Japanese maples, white mulberry trees, beeches, magnolias, mock orange and silver olive shrubs, honeysuckles, Korean lilacs, quinces, privets, viburnums, burning bush, dogwoods, spireas, standard lilacs, gone or collapsing –
Silent mornings: no more robins chattering, no cardinal song, no dove song, no red-winged blackbird song, no grackle song, no cicada song, no katydid song, no cricket song –
Hollow milkweed pods, bare raspberry canes, bare blackberry canes, the leaves of hostas and stonecrop melted, innumerable flowers absent, and harvest complete – no wheat, soybeans, corn, tomatoes, peas, beans, cucumbers, zucchini, lettuce.
From a litany of creatures and events no longer present, one might unthink the world, take it down and let it rest. Absence is to space what silence is to sound. In the monastic embrace of the quiet, autumnal cell, I watch and wait and listen, counting, replacing nothing.