By heather   dreamheather@hotmail.com
Date: 3 September 2000

Pink Cranberries and Goldenrod

Early quiet morning,
just before the light of dawn.
With the sound of just my footsteps,
and the song of one lone cricket,
I step through the brush and into the clearing.
I stop, breathe in the damp, heavy air,
close my eyes.
Drink in the feel
of the dying night,
right down
to the level of my soul.

I sit.
Survey this dreamy world,
as the sun breaks out.
The bog before me
is completely shrouded in the fog.
The swirling dancing shapes
caused by the sun cutting through the mist
look like joyous, happy, playing ghosts.
They capture all of my attention.

Slowly,
it begins to evaporate,
to expose what's been hidden underneath.
The view I now see
takes my breath away,
but at the same time
my heart begins
to mourn the ending.
All around me are the clues,
the simple suble changes
of what comes next.
The coming fall.

Pink cranberries and goldenrod
as far as the eye can see.
Tall grasses along the bog's edge
becoming tinged with brown.
The later rising sun,
more south now in the sky,
than it was before.
It's intensity has been reduced,
causing all that's green around me,
to somehow lose it's brilliance.
Their time has passed.

But as those things lose their color,
others will rise to take their place.
It's now
their time to be.
As I see this morning.
Pink cranberries and goldenrod,
they mark the summer's end.
Without my watching
a page has turned.
September first.
A different beginning.
Silently,
sadly,
to summer,
I now bid...
"Farewell,
dear friend."
"See you next year,
God willing"
"I'll miss you."

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