This is Bird Note. Today is the autumnal equinox, when the sun crosses the equator and day and night

are of approximately equal length across the globe. Poet Lee Ann Rorapaw writes about the changing

of the seasons in a poem titled Utsuroi. Utsuroi is the Japanese word for evanescence. The idea that something you know is not going to last

is made more intensely beautiful by the fact that it's going to disappear or leave. I'm very sensitive

to light. I think I'm solar powered.

And at the moment where, you know, the days start to shrink a little bit and there's more

darkness, the light seems especially beautiful.

Utsudoi.

Morning light sifts through the window later more tentatively. It takes its time pooling and accumulating in hot, buttery squares on the floor where the cats love to dip and roll themselves as if they were succulent pieces of lobster.

Night comes shuddering down more quickly.

The band of light that wraps around each day like a wide bright ribbon is shrinking.

The way a favorite shirt shrinks in the dryer, leaving the day's wrists and hips uncovered.

A red-headed woodpecker runs up, then down a wooden column on my front porch with splayed agile feet.

Periodically, it stops to tap.

Head, a thrumming, shiny blur like a sewing machine bobbin.

The cats nudge the curtains aside with their heads and stare.

In the evening, lacy insects with bodies the color of green apples quiver around the windows, a shiver of filigree

drawn to the light inside. Things quicken. The geraniums and dahlias burn their colors

into the air more brightly.

Birds hurry and harried twittering conferences and I think reckless thoughts.

Things quicken.

Why do I always love the light the most only at the moment of its leaving?

...