As summer turns to fall, I enter a period of deep reflection. It has always been this way. Even before I discovered Robert Frost’s NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY, I had a deep appreciation for the importance of the time between summer and fall. It is that drop in the life-cycle of a calendar square…when dawn goes down to day…that pulls at my heartstrings. And as day seeps away into the gloaming…that is the time when I want to scream, “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Look at me. Most people mix metaphors. Me? I mix poets and their poems. I’m just feeling so verklempt of late. I smell the changing seasons. I see these brushstrokes of hot orange and burnt sienna and mustard yellow in the trees about me and I ache inside. Now, more than ever. Because I know now that somewhere inside of me I am slowly turning to these colours myself. I have entered my own gloaming. And, yet, what have I done. I also continually imagine Jim Morrison screaming at me, “Did you have a good world when you died? Enough to base a movie on?”

Probably, Jim. Maybe. I don’t know, Jim. Maybe not. Leave me alone, Jim.

And then, don’t even get me started, I think of that song from Rent. Oh, you know the one…don’t pretend you don’t. Seasons of Love. Because…

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes, how do you measure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee…in inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes, how do you measure, a year in the life?

The mornings are a bit crisper, a bit more dewy. The sun often feels brighter this time of year…more piercing, just as it feels less heat-filled. Its glare seems more honest in September and October than it did in July. The year is winding down, and it is fighting against the inevitable…because the year is happy to be alive. And it gets happier the closer it gets to its own demise. As though it can feel the forever nap it is about to embark upon…and it rebels in the only way it knows how. It blows up into a miracle of colour and light.

“I am here! This is me! I AM.”

Don’t you…forget about me.

And the year, it is so desperate not to die. It holds a ghetto-blaster up in the air and it says, “Take me as I am…do not forsake me. I will love you, if only you will let me stay here…in your life…in your love.”

And the year that is slowly dying…it plays for us a song to keep our attention. To justify its staying when it knows it cannot. It tries to tempt and trick the heart. “I can stay,” the year says, “if you love me enough.”

Love I get so lost, sometimes…days pass and this emptiness fills my heart…when I want to run away…I drive off in my car…but whichever way I go…I come back to the place you are.

How do we authenticate our lives? As the leaves burst into colour–and then later dry out and abandon all hope and wither to the ground–we too are changing. We may not know when, or why, or how, or where we die. But we all walk that Eventual Eventual. If we don’t contemplate our journey while taking it, what’s the point?

Ponder your life. Forgive. Let go. Heal. And when you’re ready to shuffle off this mortal coil, remember one thing, my lovelies…DO IT TO THE BEAT OF LOVE and DO IT IN DANCE…

Do not go gentle into that good night – Dylan Thomas, 1914 – 1953

Nothing Gold Can Stay – Robert Frost, 1874 – 1963

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.

This time of year. It always makes me a little bit more insane. And sad. And happy…gloriously happy. I will not go gently into this coming autumn.