Paradox?

This just came upon me. Out of nowhere I found myself writing.

Paradox?

And when evening meanders through the streets
And twilight deceives the glass shielded eye.
The era comes forward with imitation warmth
Speak to me of greens and reds and golds
All shades of winter’s colour
Tell me your truth where you meet the hard earth
And humble it in your presence.

Our synthetic lives bear no resemblance to the prophet
When did our clothes nurse us through the night?
When did our feet feel the cold and harsh dust?
Or the mire of yesterday’s burst?

That I was birthed in times of comfort
That I came forth knowing no poverty
That I sleep in deep covers
Praise be to the evolution we inspire

As evening meanders through the streets
And winters cold lulls nature to sleep
My lullaby remains in the modernity of England
And the knowing that many know a different winter
Tell me your truth where you meet the desert
Humble me in your poverty and need
Our era the same, the experience not.

Woodland Walk

Once a week we take Harry the dog to the park for a woodland walk. Other walks consist of speed for exercise but the woodland walk is always my partner Pat and I strolling while Harry gets a good run around. As the year has progressed we’ve watched the walk change colour. As summer has turned to autumn the leaves have been falling. Gold and browns of different shades laying all around. That wonderful sound of crackling leaves under foot confirms that the seasons have turned and the year is growing old.
How many autumns have I experienced? Why was today so different?
As Harry jogged ahead, my eyes took in a new colour on the ground. Pat noticed it too and said “Sham, have you noticed? Look at the ground. Red leaves! Isn’t it beautiful?”
I verbally agreed in some kind of drab fashion but I was already absorbed in it. The path and surrounding area was so strikingly majestic and yet the feeling it imposed on me was not one of cold dignified alienation but one of such an embracing warmth that I won’t deny I considered scooping up an armful to take home.
Autumn can be such a heavy time when surrounded by the end of the annual glow of summer and trees become bare and enfolded in an invisible solitude. The dying of the beauty we adored in the warm hazy months of the mid-year can easily bring to the heart a desire to die with it, not in a physical sense but in the way we close ourselves in around the warmth of radiators and fires, making the outside world a mental wilderness during it’s time of re-energising.
Those red leaves connected to me. They told me of life. They reminded me that colour is superficial and unimportant and that autumn sings of a cycle. Nature is not dying, she is merely going to sleep, wrapping herself in her coat of brown and gold and red to recharge her batteries ready for the bursting forth of spring. The image is no different than one of me snuggling under the duvet to unwind, calming the events of the day and sleeping so that I’m ready for the day to come.
Although the ‘day’ of the year moves slower than my own cycle of re-energising, it is just as beautiful and peaceful and I viewed its peaceful enfolding today.
I can now look forward to the vigour of awakening on that woodland walk. The sudden burst of nature’s morning is only a sleep away.
What a wonderful world we live in, if only we paid more attention to the beauty in which we live.
My trust in the artistic stroke of the Divine Spirit is ever renewed.

Blessings