What About This…? 10.30.2014

By Wayne William Cipriano

Black yarn spider webs turning up in many room corners of our home. Desiccated ears of corn artistically tied together and stacked like the year’s harvest. Tiny witches riding miniscule brooms gliding over countertops. Bat silhouettes cut from black construction paper attached to mirrors and closet doors. Fire-colored leaves woven into wreaths hanging from the pipe gate and welcoming visitors at the front door. Candy corn showing up in strategically placed bowls and irresistible chocolate treats both homemade and gifted by friends distributed about where no one could rationally expect control and where no one can detect loss of same.

Halloween is coming and that means the most wonderful season –– autumn –– has finally arrived.

Crisp nights, mild days, no bugs. Hay is put up, pastures are in good shape ready to be opened, feeding is a long way off. And before our very eyes the lush green of the woods all around us is settling down and preparing to produce the festival of hues that makes you smile every time you look out the window.

It always seems, perhaps a function of our latitude but more likely an artifact of my unparalleled appreciation of autumn, that it lasts longer than it should. Every other “special time” of the year swoops by and is gone before you know it. You would expect the best season of all to go by even faster. But it doesn’t!

Every morning you awake and are astonished that it is even better than yesterday; there is more color, it is even cooler, it is just…nicer! Every evening sunset seems to somehow magnify the colors around you even more. And, until that windstorm finally shows up and tears the last leaves away, you just know tomorrow is going to be even better.

Man, I really dig Autumn. Don’t you?