Buster's hands were like leaves, veins spreading out and out

Autumn comes, rolls in like the fog, like someone once said – on little cat's feet. Autumn is this way as well. Quiet until it is upon us, until the wind knocks us over suddenly in a gust as a wave is wont to do. Pulls us under with its scents of decay and longing. We like the bite and the chill, but we forget these things until the gust comes to knock us down. And at once we remember. We relish the taste of fires being slowly lit. We look forward to putting our bundled shoulders against the wind – acknowledging the comfort of a bear's hibernation – we endure with mixed feeling of pleasure and distress the sting of the change ,for we stand amidst the colors we forgot we knew. Colors that swirl in invisible eddies around our feet. How could I have forgotten such love for a leaf? Perhaps I never knew it before, not like I know it in the present moment....

Autumn is the dance before the nightly retire, the one last hurrah before we give up the last beats of our hearts. To snuggle down for the long darkness that we cry out against with so much fear and so much sadness. So many people write about Autumn. You'd think it would have lost its mystery; we'd know it by heart and not give a thought to it for a second. Autumn would be just a word with a definition, with a simple signifier and we'd move on to winter where the challenges mount and we wait in uncertainty for the coming spring. But perhaps this is why so many write about Autumn: it is inexplicable, needing thousands of metaphors and similes, thousands of poems and prose to grab a wisp of it as it rushes by, carrying along with it the colors, the cicadas in the trees, the smells of cut wheat and drying summer grasses, the living testaments. It is elusive. It is full to the brim of an excitement inexhausted. And we forget what it is and what it holds, so when it comes on its cat's feet while we are still holding onto the the last strands of summer, surprise fills us up. What a glorious thing is Autumn! And part of this fullness is sadness because we know how short it is, that the colors fleet past our eyes and nose and become once again part of the dirt – dead – and giving life years and years from now.

But I am not years and years from now. I am now. And I want to feel everything this moment. I want wind to whirl and the reds, yellows, and oranges to float about me and fill my nostrils while I hold a cup of tea and look upon and hug everyone I know from all my time on this little blue planet. In all my selfishness, I want you with me always – the same as I want Autumn with me always.

Autumn. It's a little girl's name. It's my favorite girl's name. I see her standing among the leaves; they are swirling about her in that invisible eddy, not minding if they land on her knitted hat or the shoulder of her jacket, crumbles of them stuck in her socks and scratching her ankles. There is nothing but joy and a few missing teeth. Nothing but hope, for how can you not hope when you see life going out with such a brilliant, shimmering bang. Maybe for you Autumn is an elderly woman smiling – as she touches the cold pane of glass – at the child in the yard who jumps recklessly into the beautiful mound of decaying leaves. But Autumn is a child, Autumn is me long ago with hopes beyond hope, recklessly bounding into the unknown depths of a pile of leaves. I want Autumn to stay with me always and remind me of that child that I often forget. I desire most fervently to simply remain with that unceasing hope, but the most I can achieve is to be like Autumn and go out with a brilliant, shimmering bang.

For you, my love. For me.