Spring in fall
Poetry Corner
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Every September,
the campus blooms again.
Not with lilies
nor daffodils,
but with books and new looks.
With crowded hallways
and long Tim’s line.
With confused faces and even tired ones.
Outside, the trees begin
their quiet conversation
to trade green
for orange, yellow, and red.
But on campus,
life anew begins, a different type of green.
Green with possibility.
Green with growth.
Green with hope.
Because summer is a strange kind of winter.
We disappear.
Hibernate beneath the heat,
sleeping longer,
thinking deeper,
becoming quieter.
And somewhere between
May and August,
we shed.
Old habits.
Old fears.
Old versions of ourselves.
It’s September and suddenly,
we are seeds again.
Buried beneath the familiar soil
of classrooms, lecture halls,
events and routines.
All things to make us grow.
Whether this is your first or last year,
September has a way
of pulling you backward
while asking you to move forward.
Every academic year
offers us another chance
to bloom.
A chance to rewrite the routine.
To plant bigger dreams.
To reach for higher branches.
To let the sunlight find
the places in us
we kept hidden.
The leaves will soon start falling,
but we are rising.
The days may be getting shorter,
but our horizons are getting longer.
The air may be getting colder,
but something inside us
is warming.
Perhaps that is the secret
we forget every year:
That endings
can be beginnings in disguise.
Maybe the seasons
have never been as simple
as we thought they were.
Maybe, just maybe,
Winter knows that even stillness can be preparation.
Summer knows that we are allowed to change.
And fall knows that letting go is not the same
as losing.
So, with the leaves about to fall
We may just discover spring
in the most unexpected place.
Here’s to another September.
To fresh pages and unfamiliar faces.
To new goals, new dreams,
new mistakes, new memories.
To the person you were
and the person you’re becoming.
To flowers blooming
where we least expect them.
To finding your way
even when you don’t have a map.
And to remembering
that no matter how many times
life asks you to start over,
you are never starting
from nothing.
You are starting
from experience.
From growth.
From everything
you survived,
everything you learned,
everything you became.
With September calling you
back into the classroom,
walk toward it with joy.
Because sometimes,
the most beautiful spring
comes
in the fall.
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