How Quickly the Junes, Julys and Augusts Go

Dear Creeping vines.

You slowly, slowly put one leaf after the other,

branch after branch climbing up the old red bricks.

Like a pod of dolphins, you lean against one another,

maybe for confidence and for strength.

Insects living among your velvety, green cushions,

puts the birds in a frenzy.

They spend the day hopping to feast the samples from your pillows. 

In and out, massaging your back, they flit.

You, so generous and silent.

I wonder if they feel your sighs of pleasure,

as they loosen the insects' grip on your hair.

You seemed so fragile when I first saw you in the spring.

With your tentacles just branching out from the ground.

Summer seemed luxuriously spread before us, didn't it?

The sun slanting in on us in the morning,

leading into the noon heat,

making us cower for a mid-day rest.

How quickly the Junes, Julys and Augusts go.

How unforgiving they are of us.

How stupid we were to forfeit our chance to play.

We will need forgiveness with the coming of fall.

The cooler winds. Harsher rains.

The sun slanting and disappearing earlier and earlier, in the evening.

What will you do?  How will you let go?

Is it as painful for you, as it is for me?

I noticed you leave skeletons when your leaves fall.     

Like a bold "I lived here" message.

What can I leave but old books and rocks?

What will be my skeleton?

Maybe a poem. 

A few lines of "I was here", written in my blog.

Words describing the world I see 

through my stain-glass eyes.