This Auspicious Moment

|Photo by KellyB|http://www.flickr.com/photos/foreverphoto/2528923758|

I read from the poem below at our staff meeting this morning, to recognize one of many transitions we are making as a collective.  Now settling into our new space that features an amazing “Collaboration Zone” that is garnering some attention locally (wait until you see the pictures!), we are also recognizing the new season that is upon us.  By way of checking in with one another during our inaugural in-gathering in our Seaport offices, I invited people to take Robert Penn Warren’s lead below and think about what they hoped to preserve of summer and what they look forward to embracing in the fall.  “Transcend and include,” is what we like to say around here.  So what about you?  As you pause, what do you hope to keep and to strive for?

First Moment of Autumn Recognized

Hills haven the last cloud.  However white.  From

brightest blue.

Spills glitter of afternoon, more champagne than

ever

Summer.  Bubble and sparkle burst in

Tang, taste, tangle, tingle, delicious

On tongue of spirit, joyful in eye-beam.  We know

This to be no mere moment, however brief,

However blessed, for

Moment means time, and this is no time.

Only the dream, untimed, between

Season and season.  Let the leaf, gold, of birch,

Of beech, forever hang, not vegetable matter

mortal, but

In no whatsoever breath of

Air.  No — embedded in

Perfection of crystal, purer

Than air.  You, embedded too in

Crystal, stand, your being perfected

At last, in the instant itself which is unbreathing . . .