Summer's End

Summer comes,

and just as presently, she leaves.

She leaves with leaves,

floating downward, crisp and brittle,

in sepia tones.

Evoking nostalgia in their wistful journey to the street,

and crushing sharp beneath the feet.

Where did she go?

It was only yesterday my toes,

were buried in the whitest sand and kissed by cooling seas.

My cheeks, so recently so rosy from the sun,

are now rosy from the autumn breeze.

And all around me,

yesterday so lush and full of life,

I witness death, of the greenest trees.

Heralding the beginning of the end,

the long, slow decent to winter's blackest night.

Long months of short days,

cold and grey,

Until the first rays of sunshine begin,

to melt the frost in my weary soul.

Flowers and leaves will return,

and summer will sheepishly show her face once more.

Only then will my soul set wings to air,

and I can breathe again.

That moment seems an age away,

at summer's end.