October

The sweet song

Before death comes.

Cold creeps in,

First stealthily,

Then boldly, briskly, imperiously.

Winds and rain

Sweep up the fallen leaves,

Carry away the colour.

Remnants

Diluted.

Depleted.

Muted.

All that lingers is

A dormant, barren,

Grey-brown world.

And yet today,

In mid-October,

Under brooding, rain-heavy skies,

A beguiling, surprising warm wind

Reached up from the south.

A single Monarch butterfly,

The first I’d seen all year,

Tumbled about in the eddies,

Danced once around me,

Perhaps attracted, deceived,

By the mirage of my bright pink jacket,

Then fluttered onward,

Lost but determined,

Perhaps – likely – doomed,

Hopelessly hopeful,

But seemingly unaware

Of having tarried too long.

Monarchs, so legends say,

 - And I choose to believe -

Are the spirits of lost loved ones,

Returning for a brief visit

To those who mourn them still.

As I lost sight of the windborne scrap of orange

And wondered if it were a mirage of my own making,

I looked up at the storm-soured sky.

My eye fell upon a tiny gap of bright blue

Amid the angry, low-slung greys.

October may bring death,

But death, like October,

is simply part of a cycle:

Renewal.

Memory.

Hope.

Life.

Even as death creeps inevitably closer,

They find their way.

They do not die,

But go somewhere else.