Autumn carries more gold in its pockets
than all the other seasons. (Jim Bishop)
Of all the seasons in Kentucky, I like fall best with its myriad days bathed in soft light, keeping company with tepid warmth and gentle breezes following summer’s humid heaviness. I like the way it lingers, sometimes right up to Thanksgiving, a seductress stubbornly clinging to her teasing ways.
Fall helps creation catch its breath and prepare for winter’s long sleep. The prescient wrens, doves, jays and cardinals jostle for space at their feeder, fattening themselves for aerial flight to distant climes. Scurrying squirrels ransack the ground, greedy for winter provision. Trees flame and flicker in a palette of oranges, yellows, and reds, a few of their leaves–emissaries of snowflakes–softly eddying their way earthward.
My roses renew their glory, liberated from summer’s scourge of heat and insect. And I am also quickened, eager to cross over the threshold of human artifact to immerse myself in Fall’s last blooms.
Oh that life might be like this–languorous days when even time stands still and we wake to find our haunting ghosts have fled.
–rj
Brimmings: up from the well 