deeper things - autumn

A better day, physically and emotionally. It really is true that I can't tell you about tomorrow today. On a bad day, the discouragement and discomfort have a feeling of things sliding down toward a dark ending; it becomes difficult to see past this. But on a better day, I think...this really sucks...I am going to go on longer morning walks and enjoy every bite of food and the coolness of water and I am going to be the word of encouragement and the hand of kindness at every turn of my days.

I love the Autumn. As I walk into it along with my walk through treatment, I am resolved to enter it as a season of celebration and color and beauty, not a season of dying. And as Autumn slides toward inevitable winter, and I toward tougher days, I will come back and revisit this poem. And, truth be told, I love spring, as well!


Autumn

I want to mention
summer ending
without meaning the death
of somebody loved

or even the death
of the trees.
Today in the market
I heard a mother say

Look at the pumpkins,
it’s finally autumn!
And the child didn’t think
of the death of her mother

which is due before her own
but tasted the sound
of the words on her clumsy tongue:
pumpkin; autumn.

Let the eye enlarge
with all it beholds.
I want to celebrate
color, how one red leaf

flickers like a match
held to a dry branch,
and the whole world goes up
in orange and gold.

~ Linda Pastan