Feeling Autumnal

Once brash colors curl up, die, drift one by one to earth.

Light shrinks, wind whips clear the last of warmth. The sky is as gray as granite.

Lake surface wrinkles like skin flinches. Geese and ducks rock in and out of ripples.

A man can feel old in Autumn. The hues fade out of him as much as they do the forest. Good years flake away. The clouds, his hair, differ only in the way they drizzle.

I may only be middle-aged but I head for home before things really darken.

Dissatisfaction

This winter has provided all of its promised textures, white and overspreading, as lovely, in an ascetic way, as pale cheeks in a mirror.

But its bitterness plunges daggers, its winds are as brutal as they are predictable. And this standstill is another word for loneliness.

But there’s the warmth of the fire, a gathering with others that begins as necessity but matures into closeness. I hate to see it leave.

But spring is like a child in winter’s womb I’m so in thrall to its coming. But what if it’s a monster?

Each morning, the calendar turns over. The temperature is up or down. The feelings run the gamut. I so love this weather I can’t wait until it changes. Or there’s a new mood to the air. So what’s wrong with the old one? But mostly, I feel pity for those who know exactly what they want. The situation’s always too ambiguous Is this it? Is this not it? They’ll always have too much to go on.