The big wide woods I once explored with another dog are yellow now.
The maple groves, the pawpaws, the redbuds yellow, bright and cheerful. Â
Making sun where there is none with their dying leaves.
Those leaves have only six months at most to live.
And I fortunate I watch generations of them come and go.
Once when I was little I gathered fallen leaves into boxes
dragged to the basement for warmth through the winter.
Now I am content with the cycle of life even my own.
Easy to say now, all hale and hearty. But now is all I know.
Who and what I become later remain a mystery.
I might not be a model of equanimity then.
But I might.
