This is my garden flaming autumn,
the red rose bush refusing to relinquish,
the high grasses still singing
the shy notes of a forgotten summer song.
Faint glints of pinks are still hugging
the back of a welcome chair
that will soon have to be stored indoors.
It is harvest time.
The pine combs scatter like starpoints.
They are a squirrel’s wishing well.

The ivy edges are still reaching.
They don’t see what is bare.
The great hemlock is cozy
in a red hug of leafy ribbon.
The humble tree trunks offer
its beautiful bark of sweet chocolate,
as I watch Theo’s feet scamper
by the dogwood dancing coins in the air.
He stops to greet a low bush burning pink
and red by the sculpture with his own
marker.

Bleeding hearts
bloomed in this healing space
and hummingbirds as much imagined
their own wings to be their hearts.
The swallows created their own horizon
soon after
and the geese honked along
creating a beauty of V lines together
that they could lift and drop.

The leaves play at his feet
like our history of togetherness,
and something of the heart smiles
to all this grounding, here,
in this paint box of slowly shifting
perspective.

Change all can be a sweet book
and our hearts a softer nook of fresh
insight, I imagine, if we were to let it.

Theo and I have watched the leaves
equally become brave supplicants.
In storm and flurry that cleanses
all like a blackboard,
I saw, and he with his heart,
that many leaves still stay; and so
we understand that the letting go is
not an overnight.