Everything outside on this clear October morning is still.  Yet there is movement.  I’m astonished at Venus’ progress up the sky.  It rose at 5:40.  At 7:21, as the sun rose, Venus is clear up past, and to the right of, the transformer on the power pole.  I’ve watched Venus for the past hour and a half.  I’ve watched it move.

I’ve watched the eastern sky go from dark to red to very light where the sun would rise.  I watched as the sun’s first light burst over the mountain.  In five minutes’ time or less the whole orb was above the horizon.

The leaves of the raspberries and lilacs are perfectly still, but some of the golden leaves on the aspen in the back yard are quaking with the least excuse in what little breeze they can find.  I love that species of tree.

A magpie flies by.  A Steller’s jay hops from the fence to the bird feeder and back again.  Adam is already in the high field driving his John Deere tractor back and forth as he discs up the decades-old sod.  That soil hasn’t been turned or moved since I was a boy.

At the first of the month we still hadn’t had a frost.  The trees on the mountains were all dark green.  Now three weeks later the mountains are dotted everywhere with yellow larches, and the borders of the woods are all made bright yellow by the aspens and cottonwoods.

All is still, yet there is movement.

Just yesterday it seems it was spring, and then summer.  It was warm outside.  Now it’s frosty and cool and fall.

All is still, and yet there is movement.

And it wasn’t long ago that I was a young father with all the cares of providing for a large family of children.  Those children are all grown now, and are already sending their own children out into the world to make their own marks and to form their own families.

I don’t remember all this movement.  How did it happen?  Have I been sleeping?

My 8-year-old grandson tactfully pointed out that when his baby brother is grown and getting married and having children, I’ll be dead.  My body will cease moving between now and then, but my posterity will go on living and moving and serving and loving and being useful, and so will I.