Autumn Flight
She runs—small feet kicking up the copper-burnt leaves,
each step a small rebellion against stillness,
against the weight of what she doesn't yet know
she'll one day carry.
Her hair catches light like wheat remembering summer,
streaming behind her in tangles of wind and wildness,
and the field opens its amber arms,
swallows her whole into its dying magnificence.
She is all motion, all breath—
lungs full of October's sharp sweetness,
apples rotting somewhere in the distance,
smoke threading through the gold-going light.
The sky leans down, listens
to the sound of her laughter scattering like birds,
to the way her small body is so fearless,
how she runs toward nothing and everything at once.
Somewhere, a woman will remember this—
will feel the ghost of her own child-legs pumping,
the way freedom tasted like cold air and grass seed,
before she learned to walk carefully,
before she forgot how to run without asking permission.
But now, here, in this field bleeding its colors out—
she is just a girl,
just movement and light,
just the pure wild knowing
that the world is hers for the running through.
~Stacy Stephens