It's autumn now. The Joe Pye flowers have gone to seed. Orange is creeping into the maple leaves.

This could be one of the last chances to spend time on the porch hearing crows bark in the distance, water trickle over stones, katydids, crickets, the buzz of a flying bumblebee and watching the white butterfly flutter about the patch of pastel purple, yellow-centered wild blue asters.

I've gone through acres of those things with a scythe back in the farming years and came to appreciate them. I like to keep a patch of them at home for the annual day like today. A seed parachute just glided through the scene on a light breeze.

The sky is overcast with big silver and white clouds boiling upward, sailing eastward, changing all the time, many of them shaped like the trees they float behind in the sky. The occasional passenger plane flies over, its distant rumble undulating through the clouds.

To have them back in the air is a reminder every time I hear one that we had a few days when no planes were in the sky, but military in certain places like somebody stepped on a yellow-jacket nest. I imagine that over Washington and New York the sky had reassuring jet sounds going all the time. It was kind of spooky not hearing them in the air for half a week, especially knowing why.

I can't get over that in one daylight day our entire country went into spontaneous prayer and united as fast as it takes for super-glu to set up. Not just here, but all over USA, and probably the world, we humans seem to have gone out in all directions like particles from a common exploding point, especially since the computer. The farther everyone got from the source, all of us together as God's children, the farther we got from each other, too, like everybody at odds with everybody.

Then, all of a sudden one day we imploded to our collective identity. It's temporary for sure; people who remember Pearl Harbor tell me they've seen this before, adding that it doesn't last. I don't care if it lasts just a few days. It's an awesome experience to behold.

I'm enjoying very much this time of our identification as Americans together. In a way, it's like the fever that is materialism broke. The best that's deep inside us rose to the surface. It was not so much patriotism as it was a silent pledge we each subscribed to, that we're here for one another, unless that's what patriotism is. Perhaps it's politically manipulated patriotism I'm suspicious of, the kind that divides us.

Though it may be short-lived and possibly even turn ugly as it's prone to do when it turns political, I am grateful for this spontaneous experience together in patriotism. The price was great and I would not have paid that for it, given the choice. It's the balance.

I think I saw a falcon fly over. The wings were long for a crow. I see butterflies sometimes up high sailing on the breeze like a bird holding wings out, surfing the wind. The black and blue butterfly has been here a few times dancing about in the air for me. Once, it lit on the floor and opened its wings to show me how beautiful a butterfly can be. One of the yellow and black butterflies caught my eye riding the wind in a beeline a few minutes ago.

Tapo is napping on the cushion beside me. All the four-leggeds are sacked out. Aster naps on her side at the top of the steps, a foot and some toes jerking from time to time.

Caterpillar slept in the cushioned chair last night and stayed there all morning. I sprinkled some catnip on the cushion a little bit ago, so she's claiming the chair today. She's the only one that takes an interest in catnip. She likes to roll in it and get it in her fur. In a little while she's on her back like a big furry caterpillar, legs up, sleeping.

She must have heard me thinking about her. I hear the thump of her feet hitting the floor in the house, then the thump of cat feet hitting the porch floor from the open window. She took up on a step and sits there watching the landscape with the patience of a cat for anything that moves.

Two dogs are barking in the distance. Aster is up and listening. A monarch butterfly landed on the purple flowers and showed me its black and white patterns on orange.

I wonder what must the angels have felt that day? Surely it gives them great sorrow to see what we humans do to one another in war, as well as in peace when we can't get along amongst ourselves. It appears like we need a war out there to distract us from the war in here, enough to call a truce for awhile, a time-out to focus on more serious matters.

It's heartening to see so many people turning to prayer and to love in response to the twin towers incident in New York. This is not blind reaction, but a truly conscious response.

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