The Daily: 8 October 2025

As you can see, I’ve pulled this out of the compost heap and brushed it off. Mostly as a way to force me to write poetry. Because I have become lax on that… and that makes me sad…

I also restarted the AllPoetry Wednesday Word contest. But this time I’m keeping the rewards to the minimum. I figure that way anyone who enters is actually inspired by the word bank and not just barfing up AI hash in hopes of claiming a prize. I have received very few entries so far… but they are all rather good. So maybe the plan is working.

As the Harvest Moon is just past full, this week’s theme is gathering in. To me, this is more than canning the tomatoes and carrying the grain off to the mill. I tend to see life as a sine wave of expansion and contraction. Breathing in. Breathing out. Every trip around the sun, there is burgeoning growth, outward-facing time, with its peak at Midsummer, the very moment the days begin to shorten. Then, as the darkness increases, there is pulling in, senescence for many beings, death and repose. This is inward-facing time, the ingathering, the circling around hearth and home, comfort and peace.

The harvest is only one aspect of the closing in, maybe not even the most important when considering all the wondrous life on this planet. Think about this: few other beings stockpile food as do humans and ants and a few rodents. But all life goes through cycles of activity and rest. Every day. Every month. Every year. Those dormant periods are just as important to life as the busyness and hustle of growth. Even more important to human creativity. In one of the more lovely paradoxes, we give birth to our best selves — art, science, music, poetry, love — when we are still, when we are quiet, when we are facing inward. All the busyness of daylight rarely generates anything new. That comes from our darkness…

And this is the growing darkness… another juicy paradox… the growth of un-growth.

This is not the harvest everywhere. But you have your own rolling waves of expansion and contraction. And all those times of turning to rest, finding center, cultivating serenity, being home, those are your times of ingathering.

And, I find, they are fruitful times, indeed!

The Wednesday Word

for 8 October 2025

ingather

What does ingather mean to you? Think about it. If you’d like, send me a quick poem or story… or just a few thoughts. If you really have something to say, maybe enter my Wednesday Word contest on AllPoetry.

And now here are some thoughts that arise in me when I think on ingathering…

today the circle is closed
once more in time’s round
once more in mystery and majesty
once more in silence
we souls bound by this temporal blood
we are come to the call
drawn from our diaspora
our endless want
our fantasies of isolation
following the pull of entanglement
and we face center
learning the indifferent darkness
at the root of bright fire
and in this seed we find our way
as we bear the woven baskets
through uncertainty of harvest
but today
yes, today, friends
we are accounted fulfilled
in the satiated eyes of our children
all bellied up to happy sufficiency
no need for more, for less
and just so
we join hands and dance
to home’s heartbeat
pledging troth this night
to wander no more
the unfamiliar lands
to flee no more
these fears of futures
to lose ourselves
in our ancient bonds
standing on solid hearthstones
radiating belonging
warming wearied bones
this, my friends,
this is the ingathering
for this we live
for this
and no more

©Elizabeth Anker 2025