Past Peak

Not peak I like but just a little past
Is best for autumn days I’ve always found,
When colors fade, leaves fall to gold the ground,
And edge the roads and lanes where they’ve amassed.
Like how one maple always is the last
To shed its red to bare trees circled ‘round.
Or how the woods are silent till a sound
Strikes when a deer is flushed and bolts off fast.
For at their peak, fall colors prove us fools
By tempting thought that things will never change.
Of course they do, they die. And so it’s wise
To live along the downward slope, where rules
Are set in time we cannot rearrange.
Like leaves we fall, believing we will rise.