Catching Autumn, a poem

The tree outside my window once had many bright green leaves,

Then yellow, orange, red they fall til’ bare, it’s branches grieve.

Though wind and frost and season’s change will take it’s colored ends,

The sturdy tree stands still and tall, just waiting for the mends

That come with Spring, which follows cold–that wintry, darkened season;

When leaves and color come again, and bring back all the reason

For this lonely tree, when all is gone, and winter takes it’s light,

 To hope for what it knows will come, but is not within sight.

Hold on to hope, it’s all we have to get us through the cold,

For Autumn leaves will soon bring Spring if hope is what we hold.

I wrote this poem in college when I was living in northern Utah, a place which truly celebrates all four seasons. If I could live my whole life in those fleeting weeks when summer ends and winter has not yet struck, I would be elated.

I remember looking out my bedroom window at a beautiful, grand tree who’d scattered the grassy hill with it’s yellow, orange, then red leaves. I was terribly sad that such a golden season, so short lived, was already ending. Even more sad was I of the endless winter that inevitably brought chill and snow, short days and dark nights. Hope of Spring always got me through those wintry days. Now I live in a place that only has two seasons: hot summer and cold summer; how I miss that beautiful, grand tree who caught the colors of Autumn and left them by my window.

Photo: Alpine, Utah by Ivan Ho (my talented brother)

PS- find my other poem here