[Pre-order Michael Finch’s upcoming book, ‘A Time to Stand:  The Dire Hour to Defend American Beauty’: HERE.] 

The mist of forested slopes falls slowly down steps and crags to the valley deep and farmers paddies in all the green thrush.

The sun struggles through, thickening fog and bands of layered clouds winding and threads through the moss gladden covering folds.

A long path cuts around and bends of wisps and moist hillsides draped down from centuries past.

An ancient path in a timeless world, farmers burning heaps of fallowed stalks and leaves, the rise of stratus and a ghost like shroud, speeds to a time and place and tranquil days.

So long ago, these hills spoke to me in a foreign tongue and of a time.

Leaves turn but once, fading from crimson and gold to withering folds of fallen to rust and windblown paths. Glorious autumn days have left us for the darkening winter to come.

Life recedes and folds in on itself, into slumbers sleep.

What comes next is not foretold,

is spring yet to come, for the fall fades, forever in our depths we go.