starts later and ends sooner.

Earth, in its last spasm of life this year

grasps the brightness

clings to it

turning the forest floor into fountains of captured gold.

Ferns, elders, still-brown birches

stand in yellow confusion holding onto the light of life.

Overhead, leaves redden in the fall stigmata

a delicate bleeding sadness over the end of summer.

Velvet trunks emerge from the anonymity of green

outlined by shrieks of orange and pink,

liver purple and crimson.

Three months of saved warmth

evaporates into the chilled air.

Frosted fields release puffs of vapor and mist

to blow into banks of fast moving clouds

edged with gray and silver.

The lake smokes like an inland sea

and the guardian swamp maple

flares like a stoplight

always the first to announce fall

on the black-green pine island.

Its length is reflected in the silvery water

a red scissors

cutting the summer off.

There was an earlier warning

sometime in August

when a small flag of red or yellow

signalled at the end of a branch, but

it blurred as you sped by

in transit to another piece of summer.

There was another morning

sometime in September

when the faintest touch of cold

flavored the early morning

on your way to the mailbox

raising the hairs on your arm,

making you remember the lost art of sweaters.

But now it's here-inexorable.

Every single day

the lighttraps underfoot turn crispy brown-

lie down lower and lower

sigh as they prostrate themselves

before the slow measured march into winter.

Feelings fight one another-

sadness for the loss of light and life

joy in the beauty of a yellowed fern

fear of the approaching dark

and the big question

how many more?