ILLUSIONS OF AUTUMN

When you have seen the tentative beginnings of Spring, When life just begins to stretch from its slumber, when you have seen its vivid greens that erupt from stone-brown soil, that shoot out of the still-cold earth, when you have seen the revelries and warmth and lazy living nights of Summer, when the yellows and greens have lit up beneath the clear, azure sky when the flowers have flourished and fruits have ripened, know this, my sweetheart. 

The world turns, life and death rising and falling in a cycle of beautiful fire, endless grace, and the colours, as all things do, move in their harsh and gentle ways, turning about the revolutions of time.

Summer's warmth has come and gone before your very eyes, know that Autumn comes, in her dancing grace, falling, and falling, and rising yet again with the wind's whispers, dancing upon these forest floors and bejeweling them with her fiery hair and feathers, and adorning the trees with her flaming dress, singing as the birds do, a herald to the Winter King's coming. 

She twirls over the earth, and wherever she steps, all life bows before her dons the cinders and embers in her wake. And even we, too, my dearest, kneel before Autumn's call.