LAST ROSE OF SUMMER, FIRST RAIN OF FALL

Rain Rose, Jamestown, NC

Tomorrow marks the first day of the fall season with shortening days of sunshine and cooler nights.  Summer enjoyed one last surge of hot and humid days without much relief to ease the parched land.  This year’s arrival of another season has perfect timing as abundant rains have arrived ahead of a cold front that will transform the ambient air to cool and dry.  These are the kinder, gentler rains of fall that lull one to sleep at night with a smile on your face.  They serenade you during the day and provide just the right background music for reading a good book. 

A pair of Blue Jays out my window screech at one another as they move among the tree canopy announcing the imminent change.  Many of the birch tree leaves have already turned yellow and the wet rain has added just enough weight to dislodge them from their moorings high above.  They drift to the resurgent grasses below in silent waves on the northern breezes.  The familiar sound of the Jays in a gentle rain triggers the memory a more innocent time as a child in Kansas when I sat on the back porch and wondered at a similar scene, as I lamented the end of summer vacation. 

I wandered out onto the back deck during a lull in the rain and nature did not disappoint.  Rain droplets were randomly falling from the tree leaves and dripping off of nearby rooftops.  The skies were still ominously dark and the air was much cooler than yesterday when I was preparing the yard for the coming melancholy season of harvest and the winnowing down of fallow fields.  A departing airline’s jet engine in the storm clouds breaks the silence and its alien sound rises and then falls as it passes overhead, giving way to a distant drone and then silence once again.     

You can sense the seasons changing the guard as summer acquiesces to fall.  Then my eye caught the red glow of one of the last rose blooms of the summer season peering through the railing.  It was bejeweled in diamond rain drops that glistened in the faint light of day as if to celebrate the occasion.  

Dark shadows silently descend on the motionless land as gentle rain drops once again quench the thankful earth.  Another circle of life has marked the earth’s passage around the sun.  And in the midst of the peaceful calm, God whispers through the stillness, “Well done, rest and be at peace”.