autumn

August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.

Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.

Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night.

But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.

Autumn stomps around outside the houselike an annoying little sister, tappingon all the shutters, kicking up the pilesof leaves you rake, pretending to howllike a wolf. But I'm glad she's here,so we can cuss at Summer together,pretending we don't even remember her name.

Autumn is leaving its mellowness behind for its spiky, rotted stage. Don't remember summer even saying goodbye.

[T]hat old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air ... Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.

October arrived, spreading a damp chill over the grounds and into the castle. Madam Pomfrey, the nurse, was kept busy by a sudden spate of colds among the staff and students. Raindrops the size of bullets thundered on the castle windows for days on end; the lake rose, the flower beds turned into muddy streams, and Hagrid__ pumpkins swelled to the size of garden sheds.

Autumn leaves under frozen soles,Hungry hands turning soft and old,My hero cried as we stood out their in the cold,Like these autumn leaves I don't have nothing to holdAutumn leaves how faded now,that smile that i've lost, well i've found some how,Because you still live on in my fathers eyes,These autumn leaves, oh these autumn leaves, oh these autumn leaves are yours tonight.

Sometimes I ask myself how autumn smells? My answer: it's the smell of the autumn leaves firework and red wine.

Sad; so sad, those smoky-rose, smoky-mauve evenings of late autumn, sad enough to pierce the heart. The sun departs the sky in winding sheets of gaudy cloud; anguish enters the city, a sense of the bitterest regret, a nostalgia for things we never knew, anguish of the turn of the year, the time of impotent yearning, the inconsolable season.

I knew by the signs it would be a hard winter. The hollies bore a heavy crop of berries and birds stripped them bare. Crows quarreled in reaped fields and owls cried in the mountains, mournful as widows. Fur and moss grew thicker than usual. Cold rains came, driven sideways through the trees by north winds, and snows followed.

These marvels were great and comfortable ones, but in the old England there was a greater still. The weather behaved itself.In the spring all the little flowers came out obediently in the meads, and the dew sparkled, and the birds sang; in the summer it was beautifully hot for no less than four months, and, if it did rain just enough for agricultural purposes, they managed to arrange it so that it rained while you were in bed; in the autumn the leaves flamed and rattled before the west winds, tempering their sad adieu with glory; and in the winter, which was confined by statute to two months, the snow lay evenly, three feet thick, but never turned into slush.

There was a filmy veil of soft dull mist obscuring, but not hiding, all objects, giving them a lilac hue, for the sun had not yet fully set; a robin was singing ... The leaves were more gorgeous than ever; the first touch of frost would lay them all low to the ground. Already one or two kept constantly floating down, amber and golden in the low slanting sun-rays.

And you say Paris is gay, but it has its down times. You say go in the spring and not the summer, because watching the autumn creep through the Rive Gauche preparing for winter is hard.

...as the slow sea sucked at the shore and then withdrew, leaving the strip of seaweed bare and the shingle churned, the sea birds raced and ran upon the beaches. Then that same impulse to flight seized upon them too. Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry; they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.

I could feel the bite of the autumn air, warning us all of the harsh winter that was on its way.

Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.