Autumn…by Jessie 9/05

Autumn, the days visit shortly and the earth sighs
The winds tide changes dropping from the north
Crisp; clean, awakening

Leaves rustle high, amongst the outstretched arms of each branch
One last dance, then in an exhausted state, drops
Carried ever so gently on whispered winds

A blanket of colors tucks in the ground
Eclectic tapestry, colors and shapes
Shuffled feet reweaving

Cinnamon smells and autumn leaves, permeate the air
Aromas lure forgotten times
Innocent and pure

Death makes
imperfect things
into haloed beings
with white wings
fluttering in
ascension.

It turns attentions
away from the
anger and towards
more perfect abstractions
of past painful actions.

Uncomfortable truths
becomes distorted memories,
that we extract from all of these
filtered false realities.

Grieving becomes
the reweaving
of what was undone
into a long-viewed narrative,
as our current imperative
is to turn chaos
into purpose.

I didn’t whisper the word love, love,
but it lived in the spaces between my silence.
We were lovers, once tangled in time,
woven between longing and unspoken lines.
I thought you were mine this life, a thousand before but love is a river, never still at its core.

I carry you softly, not as a weight,
but a thread unspooled, surrendered to fate.
The wind takes what it will, the tide pulls away,
time reweaving love in its own quiet way.

I walk away, not for lack of care
but because I found myself standing there.
Alone in the mirror, whole and new,
with love not just for us, but for me too.

No regrets, no chains, no need to hold on,
what was once ours has already moved on.
So I leave you with love, with nothing to keep,
just echoes of us, where the memories sleep.

And though our roads stretch far and wide,
I’ll smile at the thought of you by my side.
Not as my lover, not in my arms,
but as a lesson, a light, a once burning flame