AUTUMN ELEGY

Fall is absolutely my favorite season and it drives me a little nuts. It carries so much beauty and exuberance and sadness all at the same time. It is the extraordinary burst of brilliance before the shutting down of Winter. 'Poignant' is the word I'm looking for.  Anyway, here is a poem by my friend, Liz Swenson, who refuses to be published but enriches me by sending me her poetry.  This captures the unease as the end of autumn approaches. Bittersweet.

sometimes within is a mere

reflection

of without.

an overcast morning in

late autumn when

curled and spent

leaves silently forfeit their 

grip 

and float haplessly to 

the ground.

to be blown by the next

vagrant breeze,

to be mulched by the 

final autumn mowing,

to reveal the bare thick

and thin

branches that have 

nourished and supported them. 

i, too, lack initiative,

self-direction and 

determination.

i linger,

i drift,

suspended between then

and now,

now and to be,

looking for the 

nourishing soul-food that 

will set me again in motion,

reaffix me to the perennial and 

immutable

branches of life.