I Wish I Could Keep You

I don’t want to let you go. I wish I could keep you. I know there is a time and a season for everything, and you must die again as you always do. Fading into tender golden colors, hustling and bustling away, your warm breath turning brisk and biting.

But I’ll miss you, dear Summer.

I’ll miss shoving open the windows every night so the crickets can sing me to sleep. Or going down to the creek and feeling the cool water babble across my bare feet. Or sitting in the rocking chair on my front porch, watching the deer graze in the fields, while barn swallows flutter their wings in a hazy evening sky. 

Everything was kind of slow, quiet, and easy in your days. The air was fresh, like newly-cut hay or blooming flowers—and I guess I fell in love with you. 

Because you taught me something. In our idyllic, beautiful days, you taught me to look at the world around me and find it lovely. I guess I’ve always done that. In some way or another, my head has always been in the clouds, but this was different. 

My feet were on the ground and my eyes were on the world around me, and I fell in love with everything I saw. I found enjoyment in little things. I noticed beauty in the ordinary. I treasured time alone, in the silent walls of my farmhouse, as much as the laughter and chatter of company. 

Life is beautiful. Life is moments. A thousand things are lovely, if only you have the eyes to look at them. 

Dear Summer, I don’t want to let you go. I wish I could keep you. But I know there is a time and season for everything, and when Autumn comes, I shall embrace her with just as much zest—and try to love her every bit as ardently. 

But if I should linger too long at a frosty window, watching the last of colorful leaves being tugged from their branches, know that I am thinking of you. I’ll be remembering hot afternoons when rain pelted the tin roof, or lazy picnics under the giant elm tree, or Mr. Effie’s feline chase of butterflies in the lush green grass. 

I hope you come again soon, Summer. I shall be waiting for you all winter long.