Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Autumn Ramblings


A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long. -- E. E. Cummings
So the end of the fall season is streaking at me like arrow shot from a bow.

Sometimes this has me as the deer and sometimes the hunter.

Thwack!

That could be the sound of this time of year. It makes me strangely melancholy and reflective as I watch the leaves fall to the ground and turn from reds and oranges and yellows to the shades of brown and rot. The trees that once stood so vibrant now cast grim silhouettes against the more-ever grayish sky. The night sky even seems to be heavier above me, cold and darkest gray with it's stars that struggle to shine through the gloom.

I actually begin to feel the energy and vitality begin to seep from my body. My wife starts to show signs of hibernation as the days grow short and light is rationed by the sun in our part of the hemisphere.

It is no wonder that Halloween relates perfectly to the glum season that it dwells in. You can almost seem to hear all the different parts of the natural world start to form a scream. Damp, dark, frosty, decomposing. Surrounding almost everything but the brave mums of the gardens.

I think that there is more to fear about autumn that is beyond my understanding. And I wonder if I have not known autumn for too long.

I wish for Persephone to remain, to keep summer's dance alive. But alas, she returns each year through the cleft in the earth. Abandons us to face the approaching winter with windblown rains and tumbling skies. We are left armed only with jackets and shovels and hope. A hope that we will witness the rebirth of another spring.

Autumn wins you best by this, its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay. -- Robert Browning

2 comments:

mom said...

Enjoyed this blog,but it did bring back some thoughts about the past falls of your life. Fall always meant the start of a new school year,anxious for the first day to arrive,it also meant that hunting season would be coming,the first license,gun,trips with dad to the woods getting that shot at the first game. As we get older we see fall as a time when our summer has left us and everything sort of hibernates ,things die,football games are done,many leaves to rake and dispose of,lots of things to get out of the weather for winter ,it can be a time of depression but also we know that in the Spring things return again have new rebirth and the cycle starts over again. Hang in there son,enjoy the winter,get lots of sleep with the longer nights just remember in 5 months it will be a new season!

Mitch said...

Seriously? 5 months? That makes me even sadder. I need to get more thermal underwear and start to work the midnight shift so I can get some light during the week.