View From the Shore

An autumn afternoon, water, sky and silvery light, drifting fog and reeds almost invisible in its embrace, maples reddening and aspens going gold on the far shore. The rocks and hills away in the distance are smudges, but I don't need to see them or capture them with my lens. I remember them from other years, and I can see them in my mind's eye.

My departed soulmate loved the view across the lake from here at all times of the year but especially in autumn. He loved the peace, the stillness, the feeling of infinite possibility, the indwelling grace of the world, so perfectly expressed.

What more does one need on the trailing edge of a day on October's middling pages than this? A heron in the shallows would be grand, a loon or two calling from the center, a paddling of quackers, a skein of joyously honking geese? Perhaps an eagle describing majestic circles in the sky overhead?

Perfection would be having Irv standing right here beside me with Beau, but everything else that matters is already here. How I miss the man.