Autumnal Poem #3 - The Coming Sleep

Autumn is a time of introspection and of transition. All that has happened before is drawn close and allowed to rest to be renewed with Spring. Ideas, feelings and activity are germinated and brought forth again, perhaps changed but always welcomed anew.

I repeat myself often when I say it is my favorite of seasons. It is never a dark night of the soul, but the long night of dreams and true appreciation for what is and the building of what will be.

After a long walk with a blind dog, I watched children running through leaves, carefully raked by fathers and mothers as they laughed at the spreading colors and groaned when called in well before dinner was ready.  The trees seemed to talk as the wind blew the soon-to-be naked branches. There is a smell to the season that is quite pleasing. It smells like change.

It made me smile and be grateful for the autumns that have been and the seasons to come.

The Coming Sleep
Trees chatter to another
Among laughter beneath limbs
Baring their hidden reach.

Children, tall in their long shadows,

Run to spray orange, red and gray
Leaves gathered to reveal dying grass yellow.

Faces glistening in cloudless sky

Playing in coats, too warm for the sun
Too cold to shed.

Night comes before the last bird call

As the world remembers the coming
Of deep cold and deep sleep.

And in the growing silence

There is the faith and trust
That this is but a fleeting time.

Warm embraces from without

And within are but a season away
When long shadows give way to Spring.