salted cinnamon dulce de leche tart with whiskey whipped cream

" Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wandering of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures."

~ Fall Song, by Mary Oliver

There's a peculiar, raw umber coloured piece of gnarled wood on one of my ceiling beams. Depending on what shade of mood I'm in, it either resembles a whimsical Mark Twain with a daisy tucked behind one ear, or the foreboding profile of a clown (aren't most clowns a bit ominous, anyway?). I stare at this nonconformist bit of gnarled wood as I'm polishing off the last few minutes of yoga (or pseudo napping on the sofa). This morning, whilst enjoying my morning coffee, I happened to gaze upon it from a different angle. Instead of a brilliant, wild-haired writer or psychotic clown, I saw a Celtic ash tree with three stoic ravens spiraling branches that appeared to be leaning away from a glacial northerly wind. I suddenly felt morose. The newly discovered tree is bewitching, but its bare boned silhouette and stark sentinels remind me of November's abruptness. How is it possible that the leaves have already fallen so completely from every tree? I still have lofty plans for 2014. The me from last March is pacing, anxiously, hoping that this time things will be different. The thought of another unending heartless winter, claustrophobic eight hour days; not being capable of quieting the ghosts who ask me to try the impossible, again & again ...it's almost too much to bear.

This time of year always saturates my thoughts with fevered woes, worries, aspirations & whimseys that were never fully wrung out. Contrary to my contrary self, I'm still ridiculously hopeful. More than likely, it's the remnants of a willful head cold.
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