Autumn is a woman taking her clothes off. The sun falling upon the leaves of her garments, her cheeks and fine clothes blush one more time before she starts taking off the beautiful layers of summer. Summer-green pumpkin vines bulge with warm orange, and corn husks open to reveal checkered orange and rust-red. She unfolds her arms and apples come spilling out into pie crusts and cider pitchers, herself a cornucopia of bounty. She laughs in the plenty and dusts her hands on her cornfield apron.
She smiles first when someone bites into that tart early apple. There is always a piece of hay in her hair and a pie on her sill. Her scent is sweet in the corn maze and the child's trick-or-treat bag; she smells of warmth and change.
But she never visits long, with her rosy orange cheeks and gentle breath. Because Autumn is a woman taking her clothes off. And the apple trees are shaken and picked clean, and the pumpkin vines shrivel and turn brown, and every day another tree loses its leaves, and she is a little more naked. October is her festival, and as the month ends the orange in her cheeks begins to pale. The last of the leaves are firey on dark branches now clearly showing through the last of her veils. She gathers the final stitches of her rich clothing around her as the cold slowly pulls them away, an icicle for an empty cornucopia. Until she lies quiet on a field of snow with dark eyes and arms, the white of her skin exposed now that all her colors have gone.
So we hang colored Christmas lights in her hair until the leaves return.
Comments