Autumn

 

Carolyn J. Rose

There isn't a bite in the air. Yet. But on fog-shrouded mornings there's certainly a nibble. And even a gnawing.

Evenings bring a welling up of colder air from shaded areas of the yard.

Birds are gathering in flocks and nipping off berries. They're stripping leaves from sunflowers and watching squirrels chomping at the drooping heads.

Pine cones cluster in tight rows. Splotches of red and shadings of gold decorate trees soon to have their leaves stolen by a thrashing wind.

I start to see Halloween decorations in yards and start to long for simpler times when we cut out a few bat-like shapes from black construction paper to stick on the windows, carved pumpkins, and wore costumes scavenged from trunks in the attic. I rail inwardly about commercialization and jumping the season. But I say nothing to give myself away as a fogey, a curmudgeon, a stick-in-the-mud, a relic.

I think instead about my favorite things about the season. Not that ubiquitous pumpkin spice, but the scent of brittle leaves as I walk through drifts of color.

The first bite of a crisp apple. Candied pecans. Soups. Warm bread. The sound of rain on the roof after a dry summer. And the feeling of a sloughing off, a preparation for renewal, for spring.