To October … the glorious beginning!

Listen … do you hear that? The birds, rejoicing at the cooler air, have started singing again. Yesterday, my breakfast consisted of hot chocolate and buttered toast. The leaves are only just beginning to turn colors where I live, but it won’t be long before they flash some autumnal glam.

For most of the Northern Hemisphere, October signals the true end of summer, but October is my birthday month, so it’s always heralded a beginning for me. At my age, I don’t look forward to tallying up one more birthday, except to give thanks that I made it through another year, so I’ll focus on a beginning.

Let this be the beginning of the year I finally get it all together. Let this be the year I gather my harvest. Let this be the year I cease my struggling to be, and just BECOME.

I leave you with one version of my poem in honor of the season epitomized by October.

AUTUMN

Undeniably, Autumn
looks a bit blowsy
at first glance, with wind-blown hair
of reds and golds and gaze of brazen blue.
You might well mistake her
for a fallen woman,
voluptuous and tipsy
with the fruit of her labors.
Her raucous laughter
takes you by surprise,
takes you in,
takes you under
her wings, soar
on high now you see
this is no slut, no slouch, no lazy woman,
this is strength and honor,
her ease well-earned,
her vibrant abandon deserved,
her motherhood fulfilled,
the harvest plenty.
She’s come back to herself, discovered
her wealth of beauty
and let it fly free and frantic and furious,
one last, brief, all-out fiesta
before twilight bares all
in frosted moonlight,
and she rests.

©Linda Cassidy Lewis, 2010