I have been at length in love, overcome
with summer’s glittery, crackling beauty,
its sheer points of no return in wildest blue
and emerald that trumpets a surfeit of life.
I’ve basked in its generosity, slunk about
in valleys and peaks that dazzle and sting.
I’ve slipped into fairy’s dusk as treetops shake
their big bodies, heat coaxes perfume from my skin.
Summer has courted me, wooed me enough
that I vow patience, loyalty, passionate gratitude.
I have opened my arms, been embraced, gained a healing.

Yet I am willing to prepare for it’s denouement, to
accept its blare of wild light and music will drift afar.
I am ready to welcome eruptions of rust and brass, vibrating
air and muted nights that stir an aria of autumn,
and with it another quickening. And the chiming chill of rains.

Winter even now paces in earth’s cavernous wings.
I sense its call but turn my mind to this reckoning.
Vagabond wind travels north and circles, speaks.
The days will sooner reveal a worn raiment;
it will loosen, float about, seeds of blessings.
I will find my way to other hallowed things,
freed in skittering leaves, captured in the cape of darkness,
the stealthy cold like a spell upon every creature,
a cocoon that deepens magic, unleashes dreams
and will weave me into the sweet, tender ache of living.