I do love autumn.
The wind and cold starry nights paint trees in red and yellow. Drafts down the stairs no longer trickle sweat down my back. I can brew a mug of hot tea, wrap my hands around its body, and breathe in the steam. When we bake bread or coffee cake or fruit crisp, it makes the kitchen more pleasant, rather than sweltering. I lounge under a blanket to read, and a kitten or two jumps up onto the couch and curls up on my lap, and we share body heat and yawns. Cold sky-breaths skitter fallen leaves in crackly patterns across the concrete. The sweaters I wrap around my body remind me why I like clothing so much - it's fuzzy, soft, textured, warm - and I dream of capes and cloaks and robes of violet and blue edged with silver patterns. I look at the wooden furniture I have in my room, in this house, and touch it gently.
Autumn is the season of richness. Of contrasting sky, earth, grass, trees, trees, leaves, outside, inside, the wild weather, the warm bed. The season of soups, baking, sauces, tea. The season of cozy living rooms inhabited by blanketed, book-reading folk. Poetry, the scratching of pen on paper, letters. Music, strings, chant, madrigals, Italian. (Oh, Italy!)
Oh, do not call this season "fall"! Call it Autumn, for that is its name. Fall is something else entirely, something darkening, something disobedient, disappointing, painful. Fall is what a little child does before its legs and eyes and brain can coordinate walking. Fall is down, downward, faster and faster, and if you're high enough up when you start you die before you land. This time is not Fall. It is Autumn. This life is Autumn.
We are Autumn.
