“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”
~George Eliot

I am visiting my parents in Springfield.

Two days ago I watched my backyard Aspens flutter dark green to yellow in one day.  I swear it.  The leaves were turning that fast, hourly lighter and brighter in color.  Today it is snowing in Denver, really snowing, they say.  By next week the naked branches, up to their knees in brown crunchiness, will glare at me as I attempt to rake up the once-glorious leafery.

But I?

I have chased autumn into a Missouri mood that lingers like musk on my skin.  I have escaped to turning-leaves on proud trees and the deep intensity of autumn colors that hold both the memory of exuberant youth with its’ fresh, green-spring growth, and the exploding red-to-the-core ripeness of the late summer tomato, now seasoned to a complex beauty, indisputably  richer and wiser for the aging.  The blazing urgency of the season, so much to experience before it all passes into winter, is salty on my tongue.  I inhale the cinnamon-scented air, and taste the pungent, spicy and intangible gift of the equinox while the crickets sing that haunting song I have always loved.

Burnt sienna and ochre rustle restlessly as autumn falls and the cool night air sprinkles wet diamonds onto my keyboard and into my mouth filling my lungs with cool, brisk air and enduring toasted warmth at once. Haley’s Comet spilled burning  meteor fragments in the wee hours,  punctuating the night sky with light, a spectacle for late-night lovers young and old. 

What is it about fall?  Not just nostalgia, so much sweeter.  Faded, yet more glorious.  Softer, yet stronger.  The taste? Lingering, commemorative, a celebration of all that has ever been with a watchful eye for all to come.  Delicious.

 I always hate to see summer end, yet the autumn is my life’s palette, the colors of my heart.  Even the heading at the top of this page gives ode to the falling leaf…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Grab the season with gusto, hold it close until the last leaf flies away.

pictured: a google image of Missouri and what I am surrounded by