The leaves on the trail I walk are dry—a jig-saw puzzle in shades of orange, red, brown and yellow.  The air smells sweet with heavy-breasted blackberries still clinging to their vines.  The light is softer. The is air cooler, and I finally begin to slow down after the hectic energy of summer.

My husband wrote a sonnet for me in the Fall the first year we were dating and somehow in the mess of moving to eight different homes it was misplaced.  This weekend he found it, while once again organizing a new garage.

As I read it again this morning, I am grateful.  Grateful we have weathered well the different seasons each marriage contains.  Grateful I chose him.  Grateful he chose me. Grateful we are entering this season of change together.  Grateful we have made a life filled with warmth.

Grateful we have poetry to express what so often gets unsaid.

Two Drops of Warmth

The silent, dusky streets I tread tonight
Were warm with evening sun a month ago.
The autumn sunset sheds it meager light,
And distant windows through bare branches glow.

Familiar smells of leaves and smoke return,
And crystallizing in the eastern sky
The Pleiades with icy brilliance burn
To punctuate the loss of years gone by.

And yet the wind seems warmer as I roam
Despite the chill of winter in the air.
The Earth seems less aloof; more like a home,
The lonely evenings easier to bear;

For in this world two drops of warmth abide,
And in your eyes the green of summer hides.

Charles Taylor

Yours in poetry,

Carey