When We Stop

The chapel bells ring
And the red bricks echo
The time of day,
The hour of night,
When the leaves fall
And pile up.

You have coffee;
You always do
When you walk through those leaves,
Yellow and golden,
Crunching under foot,
Rustling away
As you hurry along.

But if you stop,
They just fall,
Swirling in patterns
Chosen by the wind,
Whispering sweet songs
In the branches
That unveil their true colors.

If you stop
The leaves rot
And smell alive,
Like the roses of Reynolda;
They lose their pedals too,
In even more brilliant colors
Beneath the maple trees.

And we lose our colors,
The world we painted
Attempting to make sense of it all;
The bells ring
And change comes ringing too,
The falling colors
Beautiful, when we stop.