Autumn Life

The baby gingko lifts its glossy leaves to the sun they mirror; the elder dogwood’s stately rust-covered branches greet their young neighbor in a bowing dance. In back of the house, the burning bush’s fiery finery bursts on the eye, and the maple next door announces the joy of burnished copper. It’s been a lovely autumn, with summer flowers still parading lavender and coral among the colors of the dying year. The breeze rises, cold now as it presages winter, but the dance of leaves and flowers it conjures is a dance of life, life that is, life that lies beneath the earth awaiting spring, the cycle that reassures us of our Father’s loving presence.