Autumn Light
As days shorten, nostalgia kicks in
It’s late August, the time when leaves have begun to lose their vibrancy. Some are turning, hints of red and yellow.
The shift in daylight, ever so subtle since the summer solstice, renders sunset noticeably earlier. Back-to-school memories kick in. The smell of a new briefcase, crisply lined pages in a black and white composition notebook, freshly sharpened pencils.
One September several years ago had me yearning to be back in the classroom. Sarah Lawrence College was offering a course in prosody. I wanted a poetry refresher, a chance to delve deeper into familiar and unfamiliar poems and analyze the ways in which the rhythm and sound of words in poetic lines enhance a poem’s meaning.
Among the poems we studied was Keats’ ode, “To Autumn.” One morning, looking out my kitchen window at a foggy landscape, the first line of the poem ran through my head in a way I’d never quite understood it before —
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness —
The syntax says it all. Autumn does not dance in the way summer does. It’s a slow-footed season arriving in a confluence of cool and warm air. Misty mornings when the chill indoors has me surprised at how the sun warms me when I head outdoors.
I love the light that autumn brings, an abundance of gold at its fullest measure, even as I rue the shortening days. As if it’s not enough to notice earlier sunsets, we flip the switch on Daylight Savings Time, bringing darkness an entire hour earlier. It disorients me, and makes me blue.
The fading of leaves gets right to my heart. There’s no hurrying the reds and golds and yellows that gradually light up the trees, a gift of beauty before the leaves die and disappear.
Nostalgia takes hold at the sight of a school bus on the road. Memories of my daughter as a young girl waiting for the bus at our cul de sac. Memories of my mother, long gone, in a small Brooklyn apartment, an overabundance of family and food in celebration of the Jewish New Year. Is there any wonder why, come September, I get weepy?
A yoga teacher of mine once described autumn as the season of the warrior. Warrior poses are strengthening, helping us to hold our ground, and show courage in the midst of a transition that tends to bring sadness. Summer was for handstands (and partying), spring for backbends (and opening up), and winter for forward bends (a time for looking inward). Seasons have their own innate wisdom. I take my metaphors as they come.
As metaphors go, I am in the autumn of my life, which brings an extra measure of attention paid to the joy and sorrow embedded in the season. Every day is precious. Sometimes it feels as if a lifetime has passed between my 60th birthday and my upcoming 75th. Other times it feels as if it has all passed too quickly.
So let the leaves take their time to color my world.
Soon enough they’ll be gone from the trees, a carpet on the ground crunching beneath my footsteps.
