In the autumn time feels short, but that there is enough of it, which is paradoxical. Time being a tricky thing to think about is best done alongside Nature, where it seems to make more sense than it does by clock or by calendar. And the memory place that autumn is uses time itself as a container for the things that we keep returning to and trying to understand.
The reflective melancholy of autumn helps me to cope with change and loss, and to find both beauty and necessity in things passing. Ageing has a splendour to it.
Our culture cannot accept that. I think of those lines of Donne: “Nor spring or summer beauty hath such grace/ As I have seen in one autumnal face.”
She thought of John Donne, my thoughts go to Gerard Manley Hopkins:
Fall is the season of Goldengrove unleaving….
that was a beautiful op ed. thanks very much for posting it.
More John Donne:
God made Sun and Moon to distinguish seasons, and day, and night,
and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons;
But God hath made no decree to distinguish the seasons of his mercies;
In Paradise the fruits were ripe the first minute,
and in heaven it is always Autumne,
his mercies are ever in their maturity.
From Devotions, no. 4. Listen to a setting of this text by Richard Rodney Bennett on the King’s Singers’ CD, Sermons and Devotions
An excellent citation, Kendall. Here, the trees are burning as they die, and when the sun shines beneath the cloud cover, the trees seem lit with their own internal fire. It is an odd thing, but it seems that some things, like hay and autumn leaves and freshly pressed cider, have to die before their sweetness can be released.
There is snow in the mountains now, and one hard frost after another. The next wind and rain will bring the leaves down to be felted in the ruts and angles of the walls. Yes, it is the blight that man is born for. Ripeness lasts such a little while. This, as Thoreau reminds us, is the language all things speak, copious and without metaphor. Larry