Of Autumn

It is autumn–Delicious Autumn!–autumn.

There is so much life in dying things. All of us in our short cycles bursting to be seen at the very end, til the very end.

(The ladybird valiantly scaling the window sill, today will be her last.)

Everything is out, stirring, guided by the waning sun (whose rays–Summer’s rage quieted–are so much gentler now). And the limbs and their leaves dance so beautifully in her light.

O to find such beauty in dead things! It is an aching glory, so bittersweet. Like the ache of unrequited love (which is perhaps a madness). The regeneration of decay, the grasping fight against the stillness of winter.

We will not surrender!

Until we can hold on no more, until our stems grow too weak from the holding and we flutter back towards the earth.

Maybe we are most alive as we fall, and what comes after is deservèd and sweet slumber.

(But no one deserves a Lake Isle of Innisfree, I tell myself. My summer rage still stirs within me, the threat of muted violence ever on my tongue.)

But drop, drop slow the peace of autumn! The promise of harvest and bounty and repose. The withering of our small selves until we are humbly laid low, commended to our rightful graves.

Sunflower skeletons bow their heads to fields of corn. I bear witness to the ceremony.

The clean-linen-air on my face quiets me and I settle back into myself. Demoned and flawed but still alive and capable of awe.

A vanguard of dying things and beautiful decay. Loved enough.

In this blessed season

Of autumn.

xW