What is autumn?
It is a sky-- deep with large, gray clouds obscuring the horizon. The clouds are alive with birds flying south. This is a time, when the trees miss their leaves, and they flutter from the trees on the ground, covering it with the golden soft blanket. Through rural America the fields are ripe for harvesting, the orchards are full of apples, plums and pears. Autumn is kids with colorful backpacks and little lunch boxes, waiting for the yellow school bus each morning, as it brakes near my house. Autumn is a fall-semester in all colleges, it is a fall-semester in Bergen Community College, a fresh start.
Autumn is rainy weather, it is plenty of mushrooms, which grow up on the bright carpets, made of leaves, mosses and spruce needles. It is a hunting season, sounds of shot-guns and barking of dogs in the forests. Autumn is leaves falling down, dancing their last tango. It is trees, which already lost their outfit. Autumn is cranes, crying in the sky, they move and cry: ”Farewell”. It is a widespread, still green, valley under the cranes, and a red cranberry like a drop of blood.
Autumn is music, because music is forever, music is in the air, music is in the water, music is everywhere. Autumn sings its sad song of the wind, trees, leaves and rain. It is a special autumn melody, autumn plays on its violin. Autumn is an artist, it paints nature, using the most beautiful colors, it slowly changes them and adds new colors to its paintings.
What is autumn?
“The Oxford American College Dictionary” gives the following definition: “The third season of the year, between summer and winter, in the northern hemisphere from September to November and in the southern hemisphere from March to May”. *
Autumn is flowers of different colors and wonderful beauty, it is the last moment of their bright life before death. It is a breath of winter, it is a gray color on the grass in the morning, it is a gray color in my hair in the evening. Autumn is my dreams about the land, where I was born in the old house on a dusty street in Ukraine, there were a lot of puddles, dirty with rainwater, and mud on the side of the road. I remember the fragrance of apples in the orchard. Autumn is my favorite lake in the forest, near a small house of a forest ranger, where I lived in my youth. That lake was very charming, even when it rained. In autumn this lake was quite, water had a color of clouds, deep-gray, and leaves floated on the edge of water. Sometimes a big fish jumped out of water, stayed for a moment in the air and fell down back into the lake, created thousand tiny drops of water. They reflected sun light and became myriad tiny diamonds, which penetrated into clear air. Autumn days were short, and dusk already hurried up on the land. The light from a gas lamp poured through the windows, and the smoke from burning wood came from the chimney. Big shadow from the deer’s horns, created by the light of the gas lamp, grew up into infinity. I felt myself like I was in a fairy-tale. There was a light from the fire in the darkness, some magic was hidden in the giant black trees and sounds of owls came from the three pines. Night was approaching slowly and importantly. At that time I was fond of a famous polish poet Konstanty Galczynski. I learned Polish to read his poems and translated into Russian. I still remember his poems,
which I learned by heart. So, Galczynski compared a night with the most beautiful woman in the world, it was in his poem “Kronika Olsztynska” (“Olshtyn Chronicle”), in polish it sounded like: ”Ze wsystkich kobiet swiata naypiekniesza jest noc.”** In autumn night was especially beautiful, it had an odor of fresh air, cold and smoke from the fire. Autumn night sky seemed to me unreal, stars were brighter, air was stressed and full moon - bigger than always. I still see those pictures in my dreams. Autumn is not just a season for me, it is an important period in my life.
Autumn is a short brake before winter, it is a brake before death, because death is always. Death comes with snow and ice. Autumn is my feelings, thoughts and concerns about our future. Autumn is my country, full of people all wondering about their future. Autumn is my question: “ What will happen with my country? What will happen with me? What will happen with us?” Autumn is my planet. It is people on my planet, and all of them think about their future. Autumn is their question: “What will happen with our planet?”
*The Oxford American College Dictionary, 2001
** Konstanty Galczynski, “Kronika Olsztynska”