The bright light of autumn
shines on the yellowing trees,
a steady breeze stirring
the leaves with awakening.
We’ve come round on the season
so many times before
yet each time it’s new,
as if we’ve never seen
this flutter of gold.
There’s freedom in the air
to rise or fall
as you might choose,
to follow the path
known only to yourself.
Quiet those voices
that wish to limit you.
Take their counsel if you will
but know you may let go
from the thin stem
holding you to the old bark
and take off into the air
of your future.
photograph by Sandy Brown Jensen
This is spot on and so timely for me Don. Excellent
Don, clearly, as you wrote this line, you might have had our friend in mind: “Quiet those voices that wish to limit you.” Thanks.
Letting go of the past…what a relief!
I might drown or suffocate from the weight of holding on to that which would slowly sink me. Choosing my fate has only the appearance of honor-ability…
“We’ve come round on the season
so many times before
yet each time it’s new,
as if we’ve never seen
this flutter of gold.”
There’s an exquisite redemption in letting go of an attachment that once was life-giving, but has dried, outliving its cycle. So hard to notice, until fall. Then life seekes to pull me free. I’ve often thought the leaf still stuck on the branch in January looked lonely and lost.
Thank you, Don. Beautiful.
’tis the season to be…..
grateful to old friends…….thank you for the poem…..
it resonates with us.
sending love
A gem!
Thank you…
Love it!
So very ……. very………. true.
We have a choice sometimes in how we let go, but let go we must.
I love it.
As in, letting go…there is room for the new/change to appear.
“Take off into the air of your future” ahhh feel the air of release.
So poignant as always Don. Thanks❤️
Your words always fit the seasons, and sentiments they evoke, so well. As I advance in age that thin stem becomes more and more attenuated. Freedom is in the offing.
I echo Lloyd’s comment. Letting go is one of the most powerful and life-changing things we can do.
It is my kind of poem, so elevating!
Don, I feel myself rising, and joyfully soaring as I read you words. Yes! Thank you.
I hear — in your robust, assuring words here, Don — an invitation into a deep, powerful letting-go that freely releases one from “fate”, into a creative sense of Destiny — one that dances above the sluggish gravities and costly confounding from assumptions regarding “probabilities”. Hence, that sense of Destiny sets one to inhale, full-faced, from the fragrant, Life-giving seeds of Possibility, unlimited. Thank you, Don.
Absolutely lovely and perfect, Don. Once again, great thanks for the gifts you share so freely, and which I receive with delight. db