Morning chill

A stiff breeze

Blows through

My bedroom window

As I wake

Chilled with just

A tease of changing season

I used to fear fall,

Back to School sales

Leading to the dead of winter

Scolding teachers

Painting bleak futures

For those who did not

Follow all the rules

I learned to love it

Seeing passed the changing leaves

Even though my favorite

College professor

Said age would teach me

To fear it again

And the more permanent

Chill later years

Would bring,

but time hasn’t bent me

backwards

filling me with any more

respect for rules,

it’s the change,

the fading away

of one thing for another

and that brief cool time

when old wounds heal

under a crust of snow

all presumptions

like old leaves

turned to earth

from which other things

better things

can spring up from

in the spring

Al Sullivan's webpage