Leaf Fall

Well, that's it. Children and students are back at school, college, and university. Politicians are back in Parliament and summer 2016 is ending. We are heading toward 'Leaf-Fall.' Burnt orange crispy leaves fall from the trees, the sun shines bravely but hazy, the apples turn brown on the dead yellow grass and the first phlox appears....

" It is a sad moment when the
first phlox appears. It is the
amber light indicating the end
of the great burst of early summer
and suggesting that we must now
start looking forward to autumn.
Not that I have any objection to
autumn as a season, full of its
own beauty: but I just cannot bear
to see another summer, go,
and I recoil from what the
first hint of autumn means."

Vita Sackville-West.

Autumn inevitably brings chillier seas, a thought that has never really occurred to me, but it does today as I think of the hundreds of thousands of souls who will be boarding their death-boats to try living.
Autumn will bring shorter days and will hamper rescue missions. The sky will close around us, will blacken the nights, obscure the light. The light that draws the desperate.

The autumn will see the building of walls.