Autumn Consolations

The rains have come and the clouds too, and together they have taken us to a new season. We wake to chill and enter the day in darkness.

In the evening, errands once run in warm dusks are now undertaken in cold nights.

The signs have all been there, I tell myself, but I've ignored them. I have chosen to believe (as hot seasons always make me do) that summer is eternal.

And nothing, not the bluest autumn sky or the crispest scarlet leaf, can make it right again.

What consoles me: lamplit evenings, bowls of chili, no yard work, fires on the hearth, low sunlight slanting through tall windows, the knowledge that months pass quickly and soon it will be spring again.