Last Song

The trees are singing their last song of the year! With their radiant reds, irridescent organges, luminous yellows and translucent pinks, they're sounding their last glorious notes before bedding down for the long winter. They feast on winds redolent of Fall, of thick, loamy soil like a rich pate, drink deep of the fresh draughts of cold rain that come in abundance. They dance to winds and storms, wildly exuberant in their last fling before Spring.

I see them as at the end of a wonderful formal dinner party in all their finery, all flushed with the wonderful of a lovely evening, chatting gaily with each other about this and that, intoxicated with life and high on the heady air of a wonderful get-together. Clad in their finest finery, they bow and bend and flirt, waving their farewells until next year, getting ready to go out into the long night of winter, to bed down into the long sleep as the year turns and the moon begins to ride high in the sky as the sun rides lower.

They shine and dazzle in this low-slanting light of autumn, the reds taking my breath, mesmerizing me for minutes on end, speechless. To me, the colors sing. I look on the golden light-filled trees and hear symphonies. It's always been this way; I hear them laugh and gently undress as they show us their most beautiful clothing of the year, now in this cool, wet month before they lapse into murmuring naps, and ultimately, sleep.

They wave, undulating beautifully, shedding their leaves, dropping their clothes for us in this most glorious strip-tease of them all. I hear them chatting and calling; life at its most wonderful.

Soon I'll feel them getting sleepy once it gets cooler and they've taken off their clothes. Their murmurs will gently lull me to sleep at night as they bend and sway with the night winds and let the stars and moon shine through my bedroom windows; sleepless, I track the progress of stars and moon through their branches.

At Light's Coming, the Winter Solstice, "Sun's Stopping", I know they're dead alseep. I caress, but don't waken them. Soon they'll stir again when warmth and rains return and new green peeks from the hills.

But now, they are at their most beautiful.

What a party!

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