As much as I lament the shortening of days and the decreased hours of sunlight, truth be told, I adore autumn. If I could live in the weather of autumn year-round, I would do so in a heartbeat. If I could feel the crunch of leaves beneath my feet and the crisp chill of autumn air for most of my days, I would have lived a rich life. I anxiously await the first fire in the hearth, the reds and golds of the trees. There is something that shifts inside me during this season — I feel a sense of loss and yet a hopefulness. Perhaps it is all better captured in poetry.

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Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends
into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing, as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say
it’s easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

 MARY OLIVER

To autumn, friends.

Meghan of Life Refocused