autumn

Autumn is an interesting season, even in the metaphor of life, is a time of decline, of loss, but also intense and haunting beauty.Some places, like some people, never are, or have been, as beautiful in their fall.

Autumn was her happiest season. There was an expectancy about its sounds and shapes: the distant thunk pomp of leather and young bodies on the practice field near her house made her think of bands and cold Coca-Colas, parched peanuts and the sight of people's breath in the air. There was even something to look forward to when school started - renewals of old feuds and friendships, weeks of learning again what one half forgot in the long summer. Fall was hot-supper time with everything to eat one missed in the morning when too sleepy to enjoy it.

It was one of those perfect fall days when the air is cool enough to wake you up but the sun is also kissing your face.

I suppose you think you know what autumn looks like. Even if you live in the Los Angeles dreamed of by September__ schoolmates, you have surely seen postcards and photographs of the kind of autumn I mean. The trees go all red and blazing orange and gold, and wood fires burn at night so everything smells of crisp branches. The world rolls about delightedly in a heap of cider and candy and apples and pumpkins and cold stars rush by through wispy, ragged clouds, past a moon like a bony knee. You have, no doubt, experienced a Halloween or two. Autumn in Fairyland is all that, of course. You would never feel cheated by the colors of a Fairyland Forest or the morbidity of a Fairyland moon. And the Halloween masks! Oh, how they glitter, how they curl, how their beaks and jaws hook and barb! But to wander through autumn in Fairyland is to look into a murky pool, seeing only a hazy reflection of the Autumn Provinces_ eternal fall. And human autumn is but a cast-off photograph of that reflecting pool, half burnt and drifting through the space between us and Fairyland. And so I may tell you that the leaves began to turn red as September and her friends rushed through the suddenly cold air on their snorting, roaring high wheels, and you might believe me. But no red you have ever seen could touch the crimson bleed of the trees in that place. No oak gnarled and orange with October is half as bright as the boughs that bent over September__ head, dropping their hard, sweet acorns into her spinning spokes. But you must try as hard as you can. Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pale wood sending up sharp, green smoke into the afternoon. To feel to mellow, golden sun on your skin, more gentle and cozier and more golden than even the light of your favorite reading nook at the close of the day.

Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable...the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street...by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese.

I told some imprecisely imagined interlocutor that each year I hoped to have outgrown being moved by the autumn and each year I hadn't

See you in the fall.

The heat of autumn is different from the heat of summer. One ripens apples, the other turns them to c

The tints of autumn...a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.

The leaves drifted silently to the ground in the crisp autumn air. I inhaled deeply, the smell of burning bonfires far, far away enchanting my nostrils.Autumn had come early this year and I was excited for the change in colors that had already begun to take over the trees of the forest that surrounded Grandmother__ house.

Then that night there was an early frost, and by Sunday morning, autumn had truly arrived. The sky was a rich cloudless blue, the air still and dry, the maple trees glowing with glorious reds and oranges and yellows, and everywhere on Gardam Street squirrels bustled about with self-importance, burying their nuts in the most unlikely places.

The mellow autumn came, and with it cameThe promised party, to enjoy its sweets.The corn is cut, the manor full of game;The pointer ranges, and the sportsman beatsIn russet jacket;__ynx-like is his aim;Full grows his bag, and wonderful his feats.Ah, nutbrown partridges! Ah, brilliant pheasants!And ah, ye poachers!_'Tis no sport for peasants.

Outside there's a chill in the air that reminds me autumn is on the way, even though it's still only September. This time of year is my absolute favourite; the leaves start to turn golden and wither away after their summer of hard work, and the sun seems to shine a lot more clearly as the mist from the summer heat disappears. Everything just seems a little brighter and fresher--a clean slate. That's exactly what I need.

Wind warns November__ done with. The blown leaves make bat-shapes, Web-winged and furious.

The gold and scarlet leaves that littered the countryside in great drifts whispered and chuckled among themselves, or took experimental runs from place to place, rolling like coloured hoops among the trees. It was as if they were practising something, preparing for something, and they would discuss it excitedly in rustly voices as they crowded round the tree trunks.

November--with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes--days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines. Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. Days when an exquisite melancholy seemed to hang over the landscape and dream about the lake. But days, too, of the wild blackness of great autumn storms, followed by dank, wet, streaming nights when there was witch-laughter in the pines and fitful moans among the mainland trees. What cared they? Old Tom had built his roof well, and his chimney drew.

Halloween creatures both friendly & gruesome peered out of the rustling leaves.

Autumn. The grace in letting dead things fall.