Almost Autumn

"When I am to die

Receive me, I'll cry

For Jesus hath loved me, I cannot tell why

But this I do find

We two are so joined

He'll not live in glory and leave me behind."

~ William Walker

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Where did the summer go? 

Perhaps it was only a few days long, after all. I can't remember. I just know that now the signs of autumn are appearing. The leaves have begun their incredible color transformation and show us again how beautiful an ending can be. 

Going to sleep is not a sadness. In the Spring new life will come again. There is reason to celebrate all parts of the circle.

School has started again and this morning the air was almost chilly as little Rosie and I walked home from the bus stop. She was snuggled deep into her cape and her bright blue eyes smiled out at me from her hood and the bright hair that the wind whipped around her face. She looked up, as she always does, to see if the mourning doves were sitting on the power lines as they always do. 

"Coo, COOOOO, cooo coo." She called. They answered, as they always do. She smiled, and we went into the house for breakfast.

We went out to the creek recently and it was brown and high. A few recent days of rain have muddied the waters that rush over the rocks. No slow tranquil drip of summer; no green lush banks. It is turning towards autumn. The ground was scattered with leaves. The trees buzzed with cicadas, and Rosie looked up trying to find which tree was loudest. 

Pawpaws will be ripe in another month or so. 

The berries are gone. The wildflowers are imperfect, still beautiful in their decline. The woods have a spicy scent; less earthy than earlier this year. The gound released its beautiful bounty and now is retiring, ready for sleep. 

It is a good time of year. Welcome, welcome, this transitioning. 

****

"Meek leaves drop yearly from the forest-trees,

To show, above, the unwasted stars that pass

In their old glory. O thou God of old!

Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these; -

But so much patience, as a blade of grass

Grows by contented through the heat and cold."

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning