16

Autumn Thoughts, Sent Far Away




We share all these disappointments of failing

autumn a thousand miles apart. This is where




autumn wind easily plunders courtyard trees,

but the sorrows of distance never scatter away.




Swallow shadows shake out homeward wings.

Orchid scents thin, drifting from old thickets.




These lovely seasons and fragrant years falling

lonely away— we share such emptiness here.




— Bai Juyi, translated by David Hinton, in Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry Of Ancient China, New Directions Publishing


Thank you for calling The Botanarchy Hotline. The Botanarchy Hotline is medicine disguised as a poem, delivered through the portal of your phone. It’s a ham-radio séance between you and the living Earth, for those ready to be bewildered back to life.

The transmission at the end of your telephone line is Episode 16: We Share Such Emptiness Here. It’s the ninth week of autumn, the swallows have traded gossip for silence and even the crickets have gone contemplative, and today on the hotline, we practice a small act of worship for endings and emptyings: the clarity that arrives only when the world pares itself to bone. Think of this episode as a lung meridian for the soul, a clearing of the gutters, a gentle sweep through the debris and detritus that obscure the purity of our original nature.

This week’s medicine comes from the Metal Element, the alchemist of refinement and release. Metal is the season’s clean blade, its virtue purity, its message simplify or suffer. When Metal moves through us freely, we can revel in the holiness of emptiness, letting the old fall away to make room for the mystery of what’s next.