Changing Leaves

The changing leaves of autumn colored brightly red and gold,
Also bring a warning of the coming winter cold.
As the wind is changing from the milder summer breeze,
You can feel the difference as it echoes through the trees.

As I shuffle down the path leading through the park,
As the days grow shorter now and soon it will be dark.
I realize that life is like the seasons we live through,
Life is like the changing seasons always changing too.

Basking in the warmth of life in the summer sun,
Never giving thought to when these summer days are done.
But before we realize the cold wind starts to blow,
And our basking summer sun turns colder with the snow.

Only then we realize that life has changed so fast,
Only then we realize that nothing ever lasts.
Life goes through the seasons as the years accumulate,
Many times we long for summer when it is too late.

Life is meant for living and enjoying each new day,
Life is meant for loving those you meet along the way.
Never spend your summer years just basking in the sun,
Unless each minute that you spend is with a special one.

People need each other to enjoy the trip through life,
A very special partner or a husband or a wife.
Alone you can enjoy the beauty that is everywhere,
But there is a special meaning when with someone you can share.

Life is like a changing tree with brightly colored leaves,
Your family and your friends and you can be compared to these.
In autumn when the leaves start changing colors, they will fall,
One by one until the branches have released them all.

If I be like a changing leaf among one of life's trees,
And all my friends and family were also such as these.
And autumn was not just for me as counted from my birth,
But autumn season spoken here was for the entire earth.

Then are we in the autumn season foretold from the past?
Could the colored leaves now falling be the very last?
Are the signs and wonders now upon us really true?
Or will there be another spring when all things will be new?

I as a single leaf will someday have my time to leave,
As those who went before me leaving me to sometime grieve.
But someday in that final autumn at the final call,
Should I still be clinging there when all the leaves will fall.

I only want to realize that in this autumn season,
I had a purpose in this would and my life had a reason.
To live and love and enjoy life for all that it is worth,
But only if the lives I've touched had meaning and a purpose.

No one knows whose life they touch or who they will embrace,
Just by actions that they do or being face to face.
But your life will be noticed as the brightly colored trees,
As either brilliant beauty or a pile of dried up leaves.

~ James A. Kisner ~

[ by James A. Kisner © 2004 (PoppyK1@aol.com) -- {used with permission} ]