Autumn Toll

Do you ever feel like this bee?  You are humming along, busy and industrious.  Exulting in the glory and amber sumptuousness that is fall. But something still isn't right.  The day is glorious; the light golden, the air warm...not  hot. Yet there is the dark presence of something overhead, dark and ominous and unknown.  You dismiss it, move on to another blossom, another temptation, another item on your list of things to do.


But with a heaviness and melancholy and sensibility that only fall imbues.   I love autumn with lust and intensity and unrivaled fervor.  With passionate gratitude for its cool temperatures and sparkling light and its promise of amber and ember and quiet.  Yet I, and you, pay for these things.  With the prospect of shortened days and waning sun.  The fear of much left undone for tomorrow, or worse yet, not done at all.  The fear of time running out.


The metaphor of season to life and life to season. 

I think of these things as I get the mail, and nag at my son, and listen to music and take my bath at the end of the day.


Do you?