Some Raspberries Don't Ripen until after the Frost

 Some raspberries don't ripen until after the frost. It wasn't what they were made to do...raspberries  are meant for hot summer days and long sunshine, when their juice gathers sweet and they turn red day after day in tart waves. Then, it seems like there will always be more. I know better, of course. I know that the days will get short and cold, and that the time for raspberries will pass. But they don't.

Some roses don't bloom until October. When all around them, more predictable buds turn to hips, they refuse to prepare for sleep yet. It doesn't matter that so many around them are ready to store up what energy is left to them and save it for other days. They use everything they have left now to remind the world of beauty. They know it will be a long winter and and they've made their job memory.

Blanketflowers just don't know when to stop. For them, it could still be June, when they first poked strong stems up from sleepy dirt, just then gone warm. All summer, they bloomed thick and sunny and liked it. They must be addicted.

The daisies are probably laughing. In June, they bloomed dense, crowding each other for sunlight in sensational, snowy clumps. Then they stopped, but their leaves stayed green. Now, they give a single gift like a child holding a dandelion to his mother. Here, this is for you. I love you,

I think maple has been listening to them all, having refused to turn proper maple-y red and gold. It concedes only its tips to autumn, telling me that it, like all the others, knows what time it is, but has so loved feeling the sap run and favorable breezes. They are not ready to die.

Me either.