the long experience of love

the impermanence of things is where my mind goes these autumn days. i watch the leaves change their colors one day and then fall to the ground on what seems like the next. the end of something is near.

specifically for me, i've been pondering how quickly my boys are growing up, how this particular season of their childhood will be over before i know it, and how heartbreaking it is to let go bit by bit of something i can never hold on to, no matter how desperately i try.


i read this last night by rainer maria rilke:

. . .Ah, but what can we take along
into that other realm? Not the art of looking,
which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.
The sufferings, then. And, above all, the heaviness,
and the long experience of love, --just what is wholly
unsayable.