Leaf-cutting

Seeing a facebook photo of a Japanese friend of mine silhouetted by the autumn profile of the mountains around Kanazawa, Japan, where we used to walk together admiring the leaves, the strong reds, subtle orange, thin pink, deep yellow, crinkly green and more, of the autumn foliage, I remember how little I remember now here in Yorkshire to do just the same. We have weekends for that of course, leisure-pleasure time, and even evenings, although the longer nights cut that kind of leaf-viewing a little short and dark, but we don't have quite the same preparedness that is valued and cultivated in Japan: to open up to what is there in the air and the light, at the moment of time in which it is. And I feel grateful now for my years steeped in Japanese culture and arts and social interactions in the traditional town of Kanazawa which so often focus around the ever-present but ever-fleeting moment of now, a moment I appreciate again right here as the bush grown up in front of my house in the last few years is being cut back to reveal more mountain than I have seen for a few seasons, though less leaves and less refuge for little animals and birds, but it will always grow back. I enjoy the horizon I can now trace, but the memory of the leafy branches that hid it for so long also lingers dearly there.

pruning
a distant hill
where leaves once were