Changes

There’s an old Sophie Tucker song, called, “There’ll Be Some Changes Made.” As I look out of my window on the world, I see a lot of the changes occurring this morning because the wind is blowing hard. Leaves are deserting the trees and flying through the air. They lie on the ground, a little heap here, a mound over there, and they are a sign that “there’ll be a change in the weather.”

The temperature is too warm  for November. Perhaps summer is taking a last fling, dancing with the leaves, staying in place ’til the eleventh hour, and stubbornly hanging on as long as possible. However, change is coming. The secret is in the wind. That’s the message it is whispering.

One winter a long time ago, a Cherokee lady told me that an ice storm was coming. She said to listen to the wind in the tops of the trees. I listened. It did seem to have a different sort of sound. Since then, I’ve tuned an ear to those signs of nature. It stands to reason that when seasons change or a storm is on the way, there are little precursors, nature’s messengers, that go before the change.  If we don’t look and listen for these coming things, they burst upon us, unaware, but if we develop the habit of using our five senses that God gave us, we can see, hear, smell, or feel, the warnings. The same is true in life changes. I get so busy, so caught up with my routine, my interests, my busyness, that often I let small signals, warning signs, or messages of change pass by me. They are there. It is up to me to be aware of them.

Soon Indian Summer will be upon us. Not everybody agrees as to when this happens but to my way of thinking, it hasn’t happened yet this fall. Indian Summer is those few warm, still (no wind) lovely days in late fall when all the leaves have turned brown or fallen onto the ground. It is summer’s last gift of warmth before cold weather. A few years ago, I wrote a poem about it.

Indian Summer

First, a faint and smoky color creeps across the blue horizon,

And the warmth of many campfires seems to hover in the air.

Then the leaves turn brown like buckskin on the trees the night wind sighs in,

While the lovely Indian summer passes softly as a prayer.

–Blanche Day Manos