Ripeness

There you were, keeping your head down, just getting on with it, knowing that there would be time enough for all those things that seemed just out of reach. You knew that one day you would reach up into that tree of possibilities and pluck its ripest fruit just for yourself. It would be a golden day in the sun, a day when you would finally have the time, the opportunity and the knowledge gained through a life that had been well-lived to appreciate just how sweet that fruit could be.

Now, though, you look up suddenly, to find that you are already deep into autumn and falling inexorably into the dark days of winter. That fruit that you were hoping for, longing for, that sweet summer fruit that hung so temptingly from the tree, has gone, fallen into the deep entangled undergrowth. Kicking through the grass, nettles and brambles, you find the remains of that fruit, rotten and broken, on the ground.

Your summer is long gone; it passed without you ever really noticing. You thought those long sun-filled days could last forever, you ignored how the night was slowly creeping over your days, slowly taking them over, and how there was suddenly a sharper chill to those mornings that had seemed to be always warm.

Your autumn fell down around you, creeping into your summer, whilst you thought you were still dancing through your summer nights, not noticing how much darker, how cooler, they had become.

We all think our summers will last forever. We all believe that we are immortal and our summer is eternal. We are wrong. Autumn will come to us all, and all too soon, we will taste the sharp ice of our winter on our tongue.