I spent the weekend with a group of older men in a wood. We had two windless days of radiant sun which allowed us to spend a lot of the daytime outside under the diminishing bronze leaf canopy of beech and oak trees. It was uncommonly warm too for the November time of year, and by the end of Sunday the sense of male companionship and community was strong.
Inside, the fall was equally well held, the sense of falling. The falling word was in fact spoken several time by different men, both marking the transition of the season and the essence of autumn, and also the changes going on in our own hearts. As it was used, the word seemed to be pulling two ways at once. There were those of us who were determined to celebrate, desirous of engaging with the beauty around us, the turning falling and fallen leaves, for the purposes of song and dance. And there were those of us who were determined to close our eyes to the light and only see the dark.
Or so it seemed. I myself was split, being pulled both ways at once for most of the two days; a trembling lightness of spirit and a trembling dread at night. At one point early on one of the men recited by heart a poem:
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like that cottage of darkness?
Rethinking the rest of the poem (by Mary Oliver - perhaps surprisingly I had not heard it before), today I watch myself falling the rest of the weekend: twisting both ways, the rest of the weekend falling, both engaging with and withdrawing from the hightened awareness of the natural world as this realm of fear – such is our solidarity as humans to experience – our finitude.
And full of curiosity, like the poem, the falling not yet ceased or ceasing, continuing to turn.
By the way, the weekend workshop was held under the auspices of Men Beyond 50, a new project with which I am collaborating. Bundles of words are being amassed, collected and distilled. Fragments and fragrances of text (for instance, watch two men in conversation about work on YouTube) are being wafted towards social media outlets. And the older men are meeting in woods. You have been warned!