Bittersweet Farm

It’s the first day of fall.

Soon the furnace will kick on.

Men and beasts who can will flee away to warmer places.

Biting wind and numbing cold, ice and sleet and snow will turn a simple commute to work into a struggle for our very survival.

After a brief cheery holiday season we will descend into darkness and cold and we will not emerge until we find ourselves begging on our knees for sun and warmth and spring.
The roads will freeze and thaw and break into pieces and remind us of a bombed-out war zone.

All this and more we have to look forward to as the earth tilts a bit for it’s annual journey around the backside of the sun… It’s all true.

But I will not join the cynics and the skeptics and the “glass-half empty” people who miss the beauty and glory of autumn with all their hand-wringing and belly-aching about winter.

I will not join their groaning, moaning death-rattle, but I will lift my voice every glorious autumn morning in praise that rises out of the deepest part of my grateful heart.

Today along the ground the first yellow locusts leaves were blowing in their happy autumn dance and I joined them in my heart. Soon the Maples will flame red and glow orange and irradiate yellow turning the whole horizon into a palate of color against the October-blue sky. The Oaks will follow modestly-the last act of the autumn show in gold and rust and brown November and when autumn exits I will be thankful.

Good Morning Autumn. It’s nice to have you here again this year. I always look forward to everything about you. Let’s put a log on the fire and have some cider and talk about anything but winter right now.

Ken Pierpont
Granville Cottage-Riverview, Michigan
September 23, 2015 -The First Day of Autumn