“Autumn is the time of year when Mother Nature says, “Look how easy, how healthy, and how beautiful letting go can be.”

“Time remorselessly rambles down the corridors and streets of our lives. but it is not until autumn that most of us become aware that our tickets are stamped with a terminal destination.”

“Autumn used to be our favorite, drinking spiced apple cider between caramel apple kisses. Flannels and new love flickering in candlelight. So, I hoped for a change in us in the fading summer. That we might remember the smells of the cider and the sweet sticky kisses. The warmth of our love, so vibrant and new. But as the seasons changed, I saw a change in us. And, I watched our love wither as the last leaves fell.”

“Brilliant boom of Spring is nothing if not for the timely death of Autumn~”

“As he walked, the sad faded leaves were driven pitilessly around him by the wind, and under the mingling influences of autumn and evening, a craving for the quietude of the grave … overtook him with unwanted intensity.”

“WINTER’S GHOST:Autumn moonincautious in the dark riverWinter’s ghost walkswith a covered faceand silver bones wait in all animalsto be bone cloth upon her shoulderwait for her happiness in that they are silver”

“Please, please, help me grow to be like them, the ones’ll soon be here, who never grow old, can’t die, that’s what they say, can’t die, no matter what, or maybe they died a long time ago but Cecy calls, and Mother and Father call, and Grandmere who only whispers, and now they’re coming and I’m nothing, not like them who pass through walls and live in trees or live underneath until seventeen-year rains flood them up and out, and the ones who run in packs, let me be the one! If they live forever, why not me?”

“Flowers, cold from the dew,And autumn’s approaching breath,I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids,Which haven’t faded yet.In their nights, fragrantly resinous,Entwined with delightful mystery,They will breathe in her springlikeExtraordinary beauty.But in a whirlwind of sound and fire,From her shing head they will flutterAnd fall—and before herThey will die, faintly fragrant still.And, impelled by faithful longing,My obedient gaze will feast upon them—With a reverent hand,Love will gather their rotting remains.”

“Once in a while i am struckall over again… by just how blue the sky appears .. on wind-played autumn mornings, blue enoughto bruise a heart.”

“THERE is something in the autumn that is native to my blood— Touch of manner, hint of mood; And my heart is like a rhyme, With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.”

“Perhaps because it seems so appropriate, I don’t notice the rain. It falls in sheets, a blanket of silvery thread rushing to the hard almost-winter ground. Still, I stand without moving at the side of the coffin.”

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shellsWith a sweet kernel; to set budding more,And still more, later flowers for the bees,Until they think warm days will never cease,For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.”

“There was a filmy veil of soft dull mist obscuring, but not hiding, all objects, giving them a lilac hue, for the sun had not yet fully set; a robin was singing … The leaves were more gorgeous than ever; the first touch of frost would lay them all low to the ground. Already one or two kept constantly floating down, amber and golden in the low slanting sun-rays.”

“GATHERING LEAVESSpades take up leavesNo better than spoons,And bags full of leavesAre light as balloons.I make a great noiseOf rustling all dayLike rabbit and deerRunning away.But the mountains I raiseElude my embrace,Flowing over my armsAnd into my face.I may load and unloadAgain and againTill I fill the whole shed,And what have I then?Next to nothing for weight,And since they grew dullerFrom contact with earth,Next to nothing for color.Next to nothing for use.But a crop is a crop,And who’s to say whereThe harvest shall stop?”

“Without as much as a single question, legions of geese lift themselves to autumn’s skies, obediently heeding the distant call of southern horizons. And I think that it’s less the magnificence of their trek, and more about the humility of their obedience to the trek. For if I was left with a single prayer to utter, it would be to be more like them.”