Nurture The World, For It Is All We Have Left

Sometimes when I dream during the day,
be it staring at a sunset,
watching the moon rise,
or seeing the morning leaves fall in autumn,
I wish so truly that I could pause it all.
Slow it all down to a thousand years or more.

I want to move with the turning leaves,
watch the seasons change,
and improve from it.

I want to become ethereal.
I want to explore every aspect of a single orange-hued moment.
I want to create within a single instance, a greater version of myself,
tempered by the reds, yellows, and browns of autumn.

I want to watch a pumpkin bloom and inflate in real time,
caring for it and seeing it through to fruit.
I want to sit by its side and tell it it’ll be ok,
because I’m there.
I want to exist solely to nurture its vines.
I want to keep it warm on cold nights.
I want to wipe frost from its veins and nurture it
to be the best pumpkin it can be,
and in turn become the best me I can be.

I get flooded with a spectral feeling in those moments of clarity and need.
It comes and goes. 
I’ll see an apple tree, with juicy fruit ready to be picked. 
And there right next to that tree is this phantom emotion without a name. 
Every time I start to find a meaning to it, it fades like grass in the fall. 
I see a midnight the color of butter, 
my friends and I sitting around a fire, 
baking cookies in tin foil, 
and there it is again. 
As is the nature of life. 

I was born in the unfortunate time where life is about to come to an end. 
I might even be there to see it off. 
And I want to do everything I can to see it through to the end. 
To soak up the time we have left and remember it 
For our diseased children to marvel at. 
I want to wander the forests checking up on every birch, 
pine, 
or fallen log I come across, 
and I want to log its many problems, 
far more complex than any machine. 

I want to sit by life’s side like an old friend
And feel this phantom feeling forever,
This feeling of giving and receiving. 
I want to feel this generosity and forgiveness forever. 
This feeling which so demands absolute silence
Purely in respect for all the organisms who are greater than I. 
As is the nature of life. 

The plants and animals deserve an existence just as fruitful as ours, 
don’t they? 

But, no matter how well you nurture a pumpkin, 
wipe frost from its veins and wrap your jacket around it
In the cold of January, a pumpkin is a pumpkin, 
And it will turn to seeds, 
Then to more pumpkins. 
As is the nature of life. 

The same wonder of death occurs in the autumn leaves. 
Those leaves do not die in any bland nature as the pumpkin does. 
They do not produce seeds, 
They do not bother with that trouble.
Instead, they flare up and shout their colors across the valleys

So the only question left I may give,
To truly describe that phantom feeling,
That which I may unveil, affirm if you will
That the phantom is called the “question”
And it is the question I ask you:

Will we die stubbornly like the violent fires of the autumn leaves?
Or will we die modestly, and watch our children live on?