Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
                -Emily Brontë, “Fall, leaves, fall”

                Two things happened this morning while I was waking up. Well, I suppose a lot more than two—clouds blew and cats stretched and you woke up, too, unless you were already up or you kept on sleeping. But the two things I have in mind are a sense of peacefulness, of connection, and a line that floated through my head and seemed like something for a poem. I don’t remember the line. The sense of peacefulness has drifted nearby all day, sometimes closer, sometimes farther.
                During COVID isolation, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about routines. I’ve tried to go for a walk almost every day, and do a series of stretches before I go to bed. Over winter break when my housemate was gone (with the cat!), I bonded with a basil plant. And of course, there have also been routines around work: the habit of reading at this time, writing at that. I wanted a pattern that would “get me through.” Then, for the last weeks, I haven’t wanted to work on my novel. Then, as a surprising, what-if choice, I’ve let that be okay.
                I wonder if my mind is deciduous. If leaves open, and drink light while I grow roots a little deeper, and then flutter down to thread through air. Sewing a quiet moment. I often ask myself to be evergreen: to wake up and have ideas, and be ready, be ready, be ready, just like yesterday and just like tomorrow. I wouldn’t ask that of someone else. I’d be more likely to ask if you could trust your bare branches. Your bursts of leaves. Your quiet buds.