Autumn

Smell it. The scent of autumn is the scent of earth and its abundant harvests, things coming to fruition, to completion. I love this time. My garden has gone wild as is proper, and when I walk there my plants are taller than me. Imagine looking up and seeing a white-and-pink cleome looking down at you. Or a giant white tobacco flower, which also perfumes the night air that just now drifts in through the open window. And the velvet-smooth moths must follow the call of that perfume, that intoxicating, sexual call, wherever it leads them. Even if it is to my study.

I took a walk with my dog tonight, and watched our shadows in the streetlights lengthening and shortening and lengthening. We walked past dark yards with trees and shrubs half-asleep, with cars dozing in their parking spaces while their owners had retreated into brightly-lit nests of their own, and outside it was all autumn and excitement and the smells of ripeness, abundance and change.

Something quite wonderful must be happening just one street over. Do you ever feel that way? As if you are catching a call, a faint invitation to something incredible, so incredible that it sends shivers up and down your spine, so incredible that it's a miracle to live and experience it. The call of autumn.