Maybe it's the way the leaves have already started to fade, how the sun has begun to hold its beautiful breath.  Maybe it's a later morning, an earlier evening, the years and their darkness creeping up on me.

Sometimes, I just can't find myself in the midst of the tall and grim-faced trees, in all their proffered promises: it would be so much easier for you, if only...

I can tell you this, I was born of a different promise, have been sung to a different song. The way I walk is littered with thickets, a thousand ways to get lost.  I am scarred by the battle, weary with the motion, hidden in every couldn't and shouldn't and all the words that have yet to be written.

And sometimes, I just want easy street, the scattered simplicity of the trees.  I swear I could be like them, there's really nothing stopping me.  Except...

Except that I don't know how to be so tall or to stand so still, to only reach with my arms.  Except that when I'm reaching, I am chasing, changing, moving; I am wanting with my whole soul. Except for this song, it goes on and on, and with every note, there's a dream. 

So I remain, lost again, a few miles in on Fascination Street.  And I keep thinking I'll see you here, but you'd only come to this place if - like me - you sometimes find yourself screaming, just to hear your own echo.  If - like me - you can't stop singing, not even in the forest when there's no one to hear you at all.

I can tell you this, we were born of a different promise, of a clearing so wide and sweet beneath its second-chance sky that you and I would spend our lives just trying to find it.

For it is in this that we find ourselves.

In memory of all that we lose along the way and in honor of every bit of ourselves that we fight to keep, I offer September's Lily.

Thanks for the wonderful work of the following contributors: Frank Ard, Jill Burhans, R.T. Castleberry, K.R. Copeland, Rob Davies, Geoff Jackson, Steve Klepetar, Mitch Miller, Karen R. Porter, Vera Searles, Gary Charles Wilkens, Chris Young and Lisa Zaran.  Thanks also to my fantastic assistants, Sarah, Kristi and Justin.

And thanks to you, too, whoever you are.

'Til next time.