An Offering of Seasons

Author: Thomas James Martin
Published on: February 1, 2001

One of my favorite books is "The October Country," by Science Fiction/Fantasy writer Ray Bradbury; One of my favorite poems is "To Autumn" by the English Romantic poet John Keats; and Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I suppose there is an inescapable logic here which means that my favorite season is Fall.
Actually, all the seasons are such a gift to us. There is nothing so pleasing as the delicate flowers of early Spring and the perennially exciting discovery that Nature has authored yet another shade of green. But then there is Summer: All that lush growth; so much beauty, so little time to appreciate it.

Of course, I cannot ignore Winter: I love those quiet shades of white and those wet blacks and subtle undertones of gray. How I cherish the breadth and quality of the sunlight as I view it through bare branches!

Yes, but Autumn! The magic of the leaves of summer turning into a myriad shades of red and gold. Walking with pale mists along the stream banks. Chill mornings and sudden frosts. The harvest has been gathered and is safely distributed or stored. Corn stalks gray in the lonely fields. Leftover apples turn to vinegar in the musty orchards of Fall. Pumpkins, squashes and gourds decorate the fallow earth. When the sky is blue and a little wind spins by, uplifting your spirits along with a swirl of leaves, I feel I meet the immortal part.

For Fall is a dance to the beat of mortality. Maybe that is why so many people like Autumn. With the plants of the earth dying and animals responding in their various ways to the temperatures and a lessening of the hours of light, perhaps, we catch a glimpse of our own immortality in all this transition. Maybe whatever powers may be are sending us a message that in the midst of the mortal throes of the earth, there is something powerful within us that is immortal and beautiful beyond beauty.

Only poets or other artists can really illuminate these metaphors that are perhaps inherent in the change of seasons, for while prose is a language that can at best offer reflections of the Eternal, the artist presses the raw perception of truth upon us as best he or she can. When I think of the essence of a season, I often remember these lines from To Autumn by the English Romantic poet, John Keats:

“. . .While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies. . .”

Copyright 2001-2010, Thomas James Martin, all rights reserved.