I look forward to autumn mornings, misty mornings that softens shapes and mutes sounds, mornings that have a sense of mystery about them, times when even the familiar can look other worldly and magical. Autumn, this enigmatic season is like no other.
Even in a person
Most times indifferent
To things around him
They awaken feelings –
The first winds of autumn
Saigyo
Tr. Burton Watson
A chill springs up as rain passes, autumn gets deeper, the days grow shorter and the wind becomes cooler and stronger. The remaining leaves are blown from the trees and fall to the ground to decay and enrich the soil, ready to feed the new growth of next year’s spring. They cover pavements and paths with a rich kaleidoscope of colour, of russet brown, gold and yellow, each leaf a reflection of the tree from which it came. Pick up one or two to place between the pages of a well-loved book; a lasting memory of the sheer beauty that autumn brings to all; a token of the life that exists all around, beyond the normal matters of daily life.
Evening, the clouds have gone, cool and clear the autumn night sky is full of stars, a river of light crossing the evening heavens, a bridge that extends to all points of the night’s horizon. As the early evening deepens the night sky becomes even brighter, shining planets rise and set, constellations move across the sky. Listen carefully; it is almost possible to hear the crackle of blue starlight. Standing here looking up into the infinity of the cosmos it is surprising how familiar it all seems. It is like the eons of time that span the universe, are somehow written into the DNA of who and what we are.
The moon rises in the cloudless night sky lighting the road home as it casts mysterious slant shadows of unexpected shapes. Is it only in a cloudless autumn night sky that the moon becomes so large and bright? Only now, when the hazy warmth of summer has gone, can we appreciate the brightness of the moon’s silvery light that leave’s its reflection upon the river’s water and illuminates my way home.
Autumn: turning seasons of the mind, and so in our lives there is autumn and spring, sadness and happiness, two emotions that define and depend one upon another. Without autumn there can be no spring; without sadness there is no happiness, so within each there lie’s the seeds of the other ready waiting to grow, when the time is right.
