soft days of summer's end

you know the type, those perfectly brilliant days with perfect weather, in a very brief period of time between the demise of the hot hot weather and the onslaught of the cold and dark time of year.
days when you must must be outside,
when you must try to drink it all in
capture if you can the aliveness of it all
before being enfolded up into your cocoon for the winter
that's the reward for enduring the heat and dryness of august
the heat and humidity of the summer
and it's the memory that gets you through the seemingly endless slush and white coldness of sleep of winter