Autumn and Gravity

Ten years ago this month, I wrote a little poem that still rises to meet me this time of year:

Ego of the trees fading away —
green to gold
to bourbon fade.
Night stays longer — the candle’s friend,
a majestic unwind will curl spring’s next grin.
So cue the music and waltz with what sheds in the fall —
for there’s no other way to rise through it all.
Grounded in love
— and making room for the bloom.
Autumn, the first verse of “to be continued.”

Lately, I’ve been thinking about gravity—the literal kind that pulls everything back to the earth and the invisible kind inside us that draws us toward what matters.

John Mayer, in his song Gravity, gave us a line for this:
Twice as much ain’t twice as good, and can’t sustain like one half could…
It’s wanting more that’s gonna bring me to my knees.
And then the benediction: Keep me where the light is.

Autumn is nature’s reminder of just that.

The trees drop their leaves—their roles (shade), their usefulness (photosynthesis and oxygen), their visible identity (color, form, fullness). All the external proofs of life fall in spirals around their feet. And what’s left?

Essence.
Roots.
The widening interior rings carved by time.
The quiet truth of what remains when the show is over.

And here’s the holy twist:

When the leaves fall and the limbs go bare,
the light passes through more freely.

What once hid the branches now becomes a doorway for illumination.
What once defined them now makes space for what refines them.

Maybe that’s why autumn feels like a beginning disguised as an ending.
Maybe gravity—the kind that pulls us back to the ground of our being—isn’t here to break us but to keep us where the light is.

And perhaps the falling isn’t failure.
Perhaps it’s a sacred clearing.
A preparation.
A making-room-for-the-bloom.

Autumn, after all, is only the first verse of “to be continued.”

May this be a gentle reminder to look around.

Ashton