Lightless Star, Scentless Flower

Uneasy sleep, so easy to sleep, collapsing in the middle of a muddled afternoon, gray dim light spilling in as the tips of high-up oak leaves strain in colors above the ground.

Fall is the decaying drift back into the ground; the fallen fruit discarded to return to the earth.  It is the graying air in the mornings, split by low suns a minute later in each new dawn, and a wind that bites cool.  It is an evening that seems guided by a lightless star, breaking in colors of a scentless flower. 

Fall is the cocoon of an afternoon, pale daylight streaming through holes in the trees, a silence like wet-leaves across the day.  Slumber comes easy as pillows grow warm and time blows dandelion-like in languid suspended air. There are covers and coverlets, lazing dust motes and somewhere the television may flicker emptily.  It is an afternoon, weightless as a lightless star, calming as a scentless flower.

Fall is the char of the wood, burning and crackling as it folds and immolates into itself, burnt oranges and blues to lick the air around it.  Fall will wrap itself around me, entangle me as its once green-garden vines now turn golden, slowing my movement and pulling me downward.  Fall is an afternoon nap, in the mid of September, as I try to hold onto the last sunburnt day in summer.  Somewhere between colors, somewhere between days, somewhere where I find the lightless star and the scentless flower.