I am not much about driving.
But it seems like lately I have been driving a lot.
And I almost always have someone with me.
But there was a day, the other day, when out by myself, on an old country road, I looked at the world around me.
I stopped for a moment.
I got out of my car for a moment.
And I noticed that the grass, the lovely blue stemmed grass that I had been watching all summer had succumbed to the waning of days.
Because you see, when the sun moves towards her autumn place in the sky here in the northern hemisphere, it’s not just those of us who in some absent minded fashion drive cars and talk and play music, who notice that the days grow shorter; that the night comes faster.
But nature herself, in all her glory, whether bluestem or tallow or laying chicken, recognizes that there is less sun, less enery filled little packets of light coming their way.
And it’s this, the little less photon delivery as the sun on her yearly journey upon an angled axis goes, that triggers the most amazing things.
Like autumn leaves and round pumpkins and bears that hibernate. Like toads who burrow and lady bugs who furrow and ducks and geese and hummingbirds that migrate.
And outside my car, in the light of that fall sun, it was the upright and beautiful prairie I noticed. It was the grass, the little bluestem, turned upright and golden. In sea-like waves across and beyond the fence as far as I could see, sun stored and yellow, waiting for harvest, little bluestem, its’ you I see.
Make some seed and blow to the wind, come to my farm on hairy racemes, little bluestem. And find fertile ground while the winter goes and then rejoice when spring comes again.
And for as many winters as I see, I will thank God for prairie grasses and moments like these.
