AUTUMN, AS BRAVE AS IT IS BEAUTIFUL

Busy! 

When did life get so busy?  When did sultry summer slip away?  

I'm feeling overwhelmed by all the change.  Change is never easy, always a challenge to the comfort of the status quo; always a given.   

Autumn is as brave as it is beautiful.   

I’m feeling wistful, too, keenly aware . . . 

. . . of the passage of time.  Another grandchild went off to kindergarten, carried along like a green leaf in the stream of life, his enthusiasm and curiosity as rich and colorful as autumn leaves. 

So many leaves, so many colors, so many seasons.

So much letting go.       

The leaves will begin falling soon like gentle notes that will grow to a crescendo of symphonic proportions.  Mother Nature is every bit the maestro when it comes to conducting.   

I suppose that’s why nature touches my soul so, no season more so than autumn, so glorious and poignant the celebration of life.  The life lessons are the same year after year – courage, grace, resilience, change, letting go.

A lifetime of seasons has bestowed wisdom, appreciation.  We are all connected, all supremely beautiful, all governed by the same laws, the same cosmos, the same lust for life.  

See with every turning day,
how each season wants to make
a child of you again, wants you to become
a seeker after rainfall and birdsong,
watch how it weathers you to a testing
in the tried and true, tells you
with each falling leaf, to leave and slip away,
even from the branch that held you,
to go when you need to, to be courageous,
to be like a last word you’d want to say
before you leave the world.


Excerpt from ‘Coleman’s Bed’ in ‘River Flow: New and Selected Poems’