Dusk falls faster
every day
sheltering dark comes quicker.

Rows of towering palms,
those signposts of eternal summer,
stand mute and windless.

Yet their shadows on the sidewalk,
ever-lengthening zebra-stripes
of hot and cool

speak and susurrate
of a coming change.

Of the impending chill
and the shimmering shadows that signal

Fall.

Time to hibernate, to hunker down;
acorns in hollows, heartbeats
of burrowers slowing and plodding.

You would think.

Not in the Valley of the Sun.

where her looming shadow demands
not silence of the soul,
not surrender to night.

Rather, a reawakening.

For, in the Valley of the Sun
winter means life and
shade means

Spring.

***