Nothing Gold Can Stay

Something is in the air. It spins around my head and makes me dizzy. It fills my lungs and the weight of it allows breath, but only so and laboriously. This strange and intoxicating air passes into my veins and bewitches my blood, speeding up my heart and making the surrounding world feel crowded and small- the box top sky begins to drop down and the sides of tree limbs spread their arms to grasp and hold. Everything is suddenly overwhelming and I feel the need to run. Change drives my racing heart like an engine and a voice whispers with the wind nothing, nothing gold can stay.

I shuffle papers on a desk that doesn't belong to me but someone with more permanence. I advert my eyes down to the fake wood surface and pretend that this morning is like every previous morning. I try to breath deep and calm the whisper's intensity: then leaf subsides to leaf/ and Eden sinks to grief,/ so dawn goes down to day/ nothing gold can stay. Blaring on the radio, the falsetto voices of middle class white acoustic guitarists- wedding music, I have come to call it as I continue to lose friends and family to happy ever after- doesn't help the situation. No, they only make this crawling, itching feeling worse as they spew promises of love that I don't believe exists.

Outside, the world is suffering through another death, another autumn. Like every year, I don't have the strength to stand by, passive, and watch the beauty fade while my heart breaks again and again. The leaves of every tree, in a blushing but morose swansong, put on their evening gowns and throw themselves from their heights, catching wind before gravity pulls their bodies to the screaming rocks below. Crippled and broken- splayed on rock, pavement and trapped in gutter and drain- the brilliant red fades to brown fragile skeletons.

From somewhere within a well adjusted me, a voice calls into the void that justice can't be so- this dying, screaming, pulling fight and the blackness of the dreadful night- surely there must be beauty that centers and grounds the otherwise fraying horizons of my sanity. A normal me doesn't feel suicidal, but this thing in the air causes me to pause at high places and wonder if my body would fall as gracefully to the rock below. Do not go gentle into that good night No. No, I mustn't give into the the yawning pull of the cliff's edge and the warm embrace of insanity. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I used to chase the sun. While I was out playing in the woods, I would suddenly notice the golden light of a nearly departed day. In near panic, I would turn myself west and start running full speed toward the fading light. If I can only make it to the crest of this hill, I would think hopefully, then day not need leave me here. I can extend it on. Something beautiful was leaving me behind and it was my own weakness, my inability to keep a fast enough pace, that would strand me in the loneliness of the approaching night. The branches of thick, darkening underbrush would tear at my arms and legs. Cold stream water would soak through my shoes and make my socks feel slimy. Sometimes I would make it to the top of the hill before collapsing to cry, realizing that the sun would go on setting and so much land still stood between myself and that lofty brilliant orb. Dirty earth bound and disheartened, I would turn from the last glowing beams of the day and resign myself to await the coming dawn. I never liked the darkness and the night.

To fight the approaching season of winter, I will not stand by passively. I will go adventuring into this good night. Perhaps somewhere among the dancing, dying leaves I will find enough beauty to get me through til dawn.


Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.