The end of summer is not the end of the world.

Here’s to October — when the light grows thin

and evenings stitch themselves with hush and gold,

and breath turns smoky, tasting of tin

and last-ripe apples clinging to the bough.

Leaves, like old letters, curl and fold away,

their margins browned by time’s impartial burn.

The sun, a tired coin, slips from the day;

shadows lengthen, whispering their turn.

Yet in the hollowing hush there is no grief alone.

Frost writes fine signatures on the grass overnight,

a jeweller’s trembling on the sleeping green.

Hedges, braided in the blue of fading light,

hold memories of summer, bright and keen —

not dead, only reclining under October’s song.

Candles gather courage in window-smoke,

and porches keep their lanterns’ steady guard.

Children trace the air with breath like folk

who map the dark with laughter — bold, unmarred.

The world keeps spinning, patient as bone and root.

Hear the oak’s vast pulse slow but not undone;

it stores the summer in the marrowed dark.

The hedgehog pads along the lane — begun

is winter’s quiet ledger, small and stark.

October is a ledger, not a last ledger.

So raise a glass to shorter days and stars

that sharpen like an old, remembered pain.

We carry summer folded in our arms

and press it to our ribs when cold winds drain

the warmth from porch and field. The world endures.

Here’s to October: bruised, beloved, austere,

its breath a map of things we did not know —

the hush, the harvest, all the secret near,

the gentle dim that teaches us to grow.

The end of summer is not doom; it is arrival.