Autumn Soul

Kiss each autumnal day; 
Savor it. 
Feel it's cold raw breath on your chapped lips, 
It's windy embrace tangling your hair and 
Twining around your fingers, 
Begging you to stay and twirl and dance 
In a field of dying grass;
Taste it, like ginger and peppermint tea 
Left sitting on the edge of the worn wooden steps 
Overnight, gathering the taste of frost and moist earth 
And the peculiar scent of red-yellow leaves 
With their brown edges rotting away into nothing;
Sense it, like the geese and the blackbirds 
Just know to be carried away to warmer air, 
Like the small animals just know that it's time 
To stay deep underground, buried beneath the 
Soft white blankets of snow; 
See it in the skeleton branches and 
Damp yellowish grass and iron grey clouds, 
Watch the trees drop their leaves 
And the crows sit like silhouettes in the tops of the oaks; 
Hear it in the soft breezes and cold, whistling winds and 
Dry, rustling grass and shrill birds, trying to find warmth;
And taste and smell and feel and hear and sense and savor 
The grey-silver rain that drops from the heavy-bellied, 
Purple bruised clouds and breaks against your chilled skin 
And dews in sparkling diamonds on your eyelashes
And slips between trembling lips and 
Runs in streams and rivulets down your spine and into the 
Hollow of your neck and across your wrists and in 
Little waterfalls from your fingers and chin and nose 
As it washes away the stains and scars of life 
And rinses your mind clear and focused and 
You open your eyes and through the 
Blurry sheets of rain, the street lights are dimmed and 
The ground glistens and the only sound is the 
Drumming of raindrops and the 
Thrumming of life in your soul.