Don't you know about autumn?
It isn't gentle like they say in pretty books.
It's a hard letting go,
leaves hanging on till the bitter wind tears them away.
I've seen dreams fall like that,
bright-colored hopes gone brown,
twisting, spiraling down to where
feet crush them into the cold ground.
Life is no crystal stair,
and neither is October.
Both of them strip you bare,
show what you're really made of.
But listen here:
After the falling,
after the dying,
comes a kind of peace.
Those bare branches against the sky
tell their own truth,
sometimes you have to lose everything
to see what's really there.
And isn't that something?
How letting go
can be its own kind of freedom.
