My Rabbits Foot Fern

I have brought the last of my plants inside from the screen porch.
This Rabbits Foot Fern has traveled with me for years from home to home.
Even though I have read they can tolerate the low teens in temperature
I just feel better with it inside.
In a few days I will put it in the garage.
When it is time to once again put on the porch
it will look like it is almost dead.
In a short time it comes back to life.

Are we sometimes like this
maybe thinking we can just not make it
it is near the end
and then
we come back to life....

~~In fall
the cricket beneath the rose bush watches
We call this time of year
the beginning of the end of another circle,
a convenience
and nothing more.
For the cricket's song is surely a prayer,
and a prayer, when it is given.

This is a truth I'm sure of,
for I am older than I use to be,
and therefore, I understand things
nobody would think of
who's young and in a hurry,
The snow is very beautiful,

Under it are the lingering petals of frangrance,
and the timeless body of prayer ~~

In part from    ~~The Cricket and the Rose ~~    Mary Oliver