Spring doesn’t know summer;
it’s just risen from the dead.
After all that time in winter,
it would rather play instead.
Spring doesn’t know summer,
but it gets there anyway:
every stormy April morning
leads to afternoon in May.
But summer knows the autumn –
it can feel it in the breeze;
and it dreads that first September,
when the chill attacks the knees.
Summer holds off autumn
for as long as it can bear,
pretending that its green-leaved glory
won’t end up cold and bare.
‘Cause the autumn won’t remember
how it laughed in early spring,
or the newness of the meadow
that gives birth to everything.
No, the autumn looks back longing
at the lessons summer learned,
thinking of the coming winter
as its green begins to turn.
Now, I am in mid-summer
and I sense the changing tide;
watching all my growth go amber,
but still holding spring inside.
When I come to November,
I hope I can still recall
the way the world looked in April
when I knew nothing of fall.
07 SEP 2003
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