14

Autumn begins unnoticed. Nights slowly lengthen,

and little by little, clear winds turn colder and colder,



summer's blaze giving way. My thatch hut grows still.

At the bottom stair, in bunchgrass, lit dew shimmers.



— Meng Haoran (689-740), 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 14: Autumn Begins Unnoticed. It’s the third week of autumn, Nature pulled the plug on summer’s rave, and today on the hotline, we follow autumn’s subtle trespass, the way she slides in through the back door rearranging the furniture while no one’s looking.

Autumn begins as a rumor, a hush, a wink from underworld... sap sinking, Heaven bowing back to Earth. And Meng Haoran, our T’ang dynasty recluse poet, catches it all from his armchair up on Deer Gate Mountain: The silence of a hut grown still, the gleam of dew on bunchgrass. Autumn exhales the breath of the Gods and fecundates all of creation with her austere magic.