481. Autumn

                                      Autumn 

We are now into autumn, which means shorter days and longer nights.  If winter is night, autumn is the onset of evening.  This depresses some people, but not me.  Nudging toward depression is a line in Rilke's poem Herbsttag (Autumn Day), which I translate like this:

Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben.

Whoever is now alone shall long remain so.

This line has long haunted me with its suggestion not just of solitude but of long-enduring loneliness, defeat, and despair.

But I am more of Keats's mind, who in his poem "To Autumn" hailed the season as one "of mists and mellow fruitfulness," with apples, gourds, and hazel nuts, as well as serenades by singing crickets, a whistling red-breast, and twittering swallows.  My greenmarket is now rich in apples that will have a special sharp taste for the next two months at most, while they are freshly picked, and my supermarket has bins full of autumn gourds and mini pumpkins.

What do I look forward to in autumn?  Lots:

• walnuts in the shell;
• roasted chestnuts sold by sidewalk vendors (perhaps unlikely here; that's how I got them in France and Italy long ago);
• mild, sunny days, not too hot and not too cold;
• fall foliage: yellow and brown elm leaves; red maple leaves; red, orange, yellow, and brown oak leaves;
• a special Thanksgiving meal: maybe have the main course delivered, but provide appetizer and dessert myself (a problem: lately I've had little appetite!);
• the last thing blooming: witch hazel, its unflowery-looking flowers blooming as late as November;
• if it rains a lot, mushrooms, which I used to spy out in wild places, taking samples only for identification;
• bald eagles, which I have seen soaring over the Hudson (rare here at other times of year);
• post-election calm, after the electoral bouhaha (not certain; the brouhaha may continue through the end of the year);
• books to read: currently, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which I read long ago, and to keep up with current trends, Elena Ferrante (in, alas, translation);
• the first snow, maybe this side of the winter solstice and maybe after it, when flurries of tiny flakes ping your nose and vanish.

Aside from occasional hurricanes, autumn here is a gentle season; welcome it, savor it, enjoy it.  Preceding it is the muggy heat of summer that saps your energy, and after it, the rigors of winter.

Coming soon:  What's Sexy and What Isn't.  Ratings of God, Batman, wisdom, spike heels, potatoes, and sharks.

©.  2020.  Clifford Browder