tribute to autumn

Like pastel dreams, this corner of the lake pops out, mountainside of cream and peach, cinnamon and silver, light green and magenta. Most sits green, yellow, red, and mosaics of them all, but a few swaths of wetland edge hold this array of soft pastel colors I get lost in, starring with dreamy eyes like a captured child, caught in this moment I do not want to pass. Swirling wetland chemistry conjures up a stew of visual sorcery. I sit with chin on my knees daydreaming into the colors, wandering about the little things that become everything as the mind hones in like a cat on the hunt. The colors move me, paint over me, fill me with something different, something I cannot explain. These leaves of Autumn hang onto their branches for just a little more, awaiting the gust that will send them spiraling and fluttering and twisting down into the water and ground to replenish the Earth for next year’s revival. What a way to go as I bask in the show as the true colors are revealed for that fleeting time. Such glorious colors abound my heart beats in rapturous commotion trying to take it all in. The birds awaken, stretching and singing as the forest comes alive and I smile as a yellow maple leaf twirls past my face to its new resting place where recycling begins.

The crispness tells me to get ready, the brisk air stinging bronchioles enlivens me. I am enriched by this mosaic and thankful for its grace, grandeur, and asymmetry. It recycles me, this cyclic nature of nature and the seasons. A time to give thanks, a time of bounty, a time to appreciate before we prepare for the hardships of the upcoming winter. A time to count our blessings, smile upon our neighbor, enjoy the ending harvest, and begin to plan for what awaits ahead just around the next bend inside the next chapter of our lives. A time to grow and see renewed life out of each small death.