Don't Rush the Seasons

Thoughts on the beauty of passing time.

I want to burn slow fires.
Walk windy wind-swept gravel lanes.
Count countless leaves
Falling, following the pace of slowing days.
Capture the rapture ravishing a fallow field
With tumble-leaf frost
At midnight moon.

I want to feel the warm fade
Daily, in time in season in me
And stand on the creek floor
Muck-mired in a southern fall

Near winter-dried,
Near leaf-fired
All blazing with rain colour summer
Through greens hanging on too long
To dog days.
I want to let the pumpkins rot
And sit too long on the porch
'Till winter sneaks by,
And withers them with her wispy veil,
As she weaves her tale
Of warm feasts, warm hearths, mythic saints
And chimney soot.

I want to stare dumb at the sky
Nightly caught in wonder gape
Sky-drawn skyward—a motion toward,
Hope deferred and gained,
As Hunter chases Bull
And Pleiades, the rains;
Until icy dew brings snows
And the winter hush remains.

Don't rush the season
But wait for its storm,
And the thick air to break
In gales forlorn,
Remain, remain, now, my simple refrain
Like fog on the lake
Holding your gaze.
Beauty breathes in the hovering.

So, be still.
The first frightful step
Before knowing.

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February 2021 - Waxhaw, North Carolina - I’m as guilty as the next person about rushing seasons along to get to the next one, my favourite one. But we should take the time to be “in” the season we’re in. The double meaning, of course, is about seasons in life. Sometimes, they can be tough, even brutal, like the heat of North Carolina summers. But sovereignty blankets our seasons—there is wisdom to be gained even in brutal times.