Fall (The Bard)

By Drew Maglio

Fall is here, temporary and transient death is near.
        The changing season, gives me a reason
        To plunge into, that enervated state of being.

Like Spring, Fall shows us there is soon to be great change.
        Unlike Spring those signs of change are ominously portentous,
        Carrying with them forebodings of the year’s
        Cold and slow, whimpering demise.

Oh Fall, how you always forsake thee!
        Like clockwork you come and you go,
        Leaving but death and a no-thing sleep in your wake.

You leave me feeling the need to slumber along,
        Hardly awake during this time and state.
        But in rest and recuperation, my soul does steep.

Unlike Spring, you are the embodiment of death,
        Made manifest in the realm of materiality.
        But until next year, the live world does refrain.

Dull but monochromatically colorful are your signs and symbols,
        Unlike that cheerfully vivid budding state,
        At the end of the year’s first quarter.
         Beautiful indeed you, too, are!

But either way, you don’t speak to me, nor I you.
        Will we ever reconcile? Will I ever appreciate the
        Autumnal cycle which signals the year’s time
        Has moved past full bloom into recession?

What is it about you, oh Fall?
        That time of slumberous death which precedes instaurative birth.
        They say all life grows out of death—Is it thus so?

It must be I say,
        But how to reconcile my soul,
        To a reality against my will for a perpetual summer?

I do not wish to go out with a whimper,
        But instead with a vigorous
        And life-affirming vitality!

Unlike Fall which does slowly die of retreat—
        Reposing always into its sweet,
         But tame wintered den.

Mortal enemies it seems we are but destined to be.
        For in you I see,
        But the most slothen in me.

I was made to be a man of action,
        But Fall demands of me rest and reflection—
        And that heightened state of contemplation!

I was born in that place, which is without season. 
        Which has cast upon me and my internal rhythm,
         A great and consternating confusion.

Thus it is hard to comprehend,
        Those metaphysical reasons,
        For the necessity of constantly changing seasons.

These are but necessary integrations, I see.
        To reconcile them within me,
        For a man is endowed with both agency and mind.

To live wholly in one without the other,
         Is to die to oneself in the other. Therefore,
        To be in perpetual summer, is but to waywardly falter. 

Eschewing being and mind, exercised for their own sake.
        Is to reject all that is best and mightiest.
       Always stuck in action, will result in quiet desperation!

Perhaps it is God, maker of season—
         And not I, who knows best! He whom directs the seasons,
          For seemingly nebulous reasons.

The seasons thus thrust upon the internal,
         An imposed external order. Take heed we must,
          Rising and falling with the rhythm of season.