for longer thoughts

The end of summer just comes, doesn't it?  Fall remembers being well-liked, so it doesn't bother to knock.  It dims the lights on the evenings that have been running marathons into the night.  Those sunny afternoons which only give way as they hand-deliver illumination to the stars. And the stars, they're not ready for summer to end.  So they hold on to that light in a tug of war until the late fall morning uses its considerable muscle to grant the sun its purpose, albeit later, because we all know how stubborn star strength can be.

     The end of summer is a battle between freckle-salted shoulders and red-apple cheeks, slightly stung by air they didn't realize would turn cold so quickly. 

  I'm not sure why a person would worship any deity other than the Earth.  Who knows us better than she does?  What God in whose sky knows that we need the slow wind to blow a little into our lungs after a busy bee season?  After a few months of too much movement?  The birds fly lower to the ground this time of year.  The pressure to soar slows, and the air curves into a downward slope.  Lazy saxophone dusk.  Meditating trees.  The last roses with their their desperate fingers splayed, grasping for the fading warmth.  They're not ready, either. 

  Oh, but the lovely pensiveness of fall!  What better a time is there to examine your own changes than those few months a year when the leaves understand you?  Summer is not a time for thought.  Since school, we have trained ourselves to keep our summers as hands-free as a beach cruiser ride on the Cape.  Summer is made of lemon zest.  Summer is made of mica flecks.  Summer is thin, and summer shimmers, 

  

  But the delicious fall demands depth, and care.  Fall does not have time to watch us shimmer.  Fall wants us to glow.  If you pay attention, you can feel it brush the salt hair out of your face so that you can see.  

  And I'm giving in.  It's time to turn in the cut-grass perfume and remember bath bubbles and long thoughts.  It's time to catch my breath and fly closer to the Earth with the September birds.  

  Thank you, summer, for freeing my skin and for wide-sky mornings and for thinning it all out.  But I suppose you can go now.