Souvenir
Shimmering yellow green
scalloped Ginko leaves
fluttering in the breeze
Soon you will fall
and that will be all
that is left
of summer…
a souvenir
A Foretaste of Fall
(revised version)
It is the school-imposed end of summer, Labor Day weekend, a weekend I look forward to all summer long for the love of Fall. It is not good to be this way. Religious leaders preach living in the present for that is all we have. I have yet to overcome this and many other bad ways of thinking. I look forward to the crisp days of September when a breeze shimmers through, what I call in my ignorance of the real name, the penny tree. It is so named because when the wind blows the leaves look like so many pennies shimmering down from Heaven. I live for the days when the sun is so hot it tingles on the skin– yet it is not the strong sun of July that burns quickly. The angle of the sun in its diurnal slant is different. Summer is definitely slipping away.
The bees, wasps and yellow jackets are having a heyday in the goldenrod, Joe Pye Weed and Purple Loosestrife. The marsh is thick with flying insects going this way and that. My eyes capture swallowtails. Happily the monarchs are still here. A turkey vulture circles overhead. Some carrion must be nearby. Earlier we saw two golden hawks fly sunlit into the back field. A wisp of a cloud floats by in an otherwise perfectly blue sky. This summer has flown by in the blink of an eye like a fritillary flits by the flowers in the marsh.
The smell of fresh cut lawn is intoxicating to my raw senses. Soon the grass will cease to grow and the lush green will look washed out. All of its inhabitants in the metropolis beneath our feet will dig deep underground or turn off their bodily systems to overwinter– an amazing concept to a mammal. Some fill their bodies with a type of antifreeze. Nature never ceases to astound. This summer I have made my peace with the insects. Terrified of them as a child I have come to love and respect them, indeed hold them in awe for the feats they accomplish. Our accomplishments pale as humans, supposedly so superior.
No longer do I see turtles sunning on rocks or snakes coming out to bask in the heat of the road. Some species of birds have left already– unbeknownst to me. I just know that some I used to see are gone and the bird song of the spring mating season is a fleeting memory. One lone humming bird flies around the marsh intermittently, causing excitement upon spotting him.
It is the time to dead head the flowers of summer. It is the time of Black-Eyed Susans and Peonies and Sebum. And soon it will be the time of the Mums.
With each gust of wind yellow finger-like walnut leaves shower down on our heads– like large yellow snowflakes– a foretaste of snowfalls to come. The sun’s shadows grow long as twilight is near. Soon the white cloud “lions and tigers and bears” will retire into the black cave of night. And the summer will die and in dying, give birth to fall. The comfortable rhythm of the changing season beats in our sometimes unhearing hearts.
(Aknowledgements to “likes” and comments may be delayed. Recuperating from surgery.)
Thanksgiving From Within
If you look between the buildings you can see the sky and the trees I watch as the seasons change. There are bare branches in between the buildings there now.
But this afternoon my husband called me in to the other room see the leaves still on the tree outside the den window.
The leaves were ecstatically yellow today as I drank in their beauty from my window seat on a stationery bike.
The yellow leaves filled the room with a wondrous yellow light. Migraines and severe arthritis keep me in. But MUCH can be seen from the inside.
Time flew by as fast as the low lying clouds. I felt a form of ecstasy with Spirit and the world outside. A peace that nature gives and one that has been rare for me in these days of deep strife in the world.
The clouds zipping by and the fresh air from the window and the bright yellow brought me great joy that others racing by in their busy lives below do not see. I am blessed though mostly homebound… blessed with a loving husband and breathtaking beauty in the great beyond. I have much to be grateful for and I wish you all many such blessings and the urge to give thanks.
Mostly I give thanks for a sensitive and sensible husband who has stuck by me through thick and thin and my many moods and suicidal depressions– as a person with a major mental illness. Bipolar Disorder. It has not been easy for him. And he has helped many others in his career as a psychiatric social worker. I was able to help him understand some of his clients, yes, but he gave them the greatest gift of all by sharing with them his sense of humor and treating them as normal human beings.
On our first date, almost 40 years ago, a walk in the park, his sense of humor was what I first noticed about him. He scored the first home run. And then moments later, another, with his compassion. And that was the start of the love story of my life.
Today I send my deepest blessings to him, and, too, I want to wish each of you many blessings of love and nature on this fine, yellow day of Thanksgiving week!
MOONSIDE 
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