Autumn Comes Again

Michael Hemphill

August 25, 2010

I like to try and find the FIRST hint of a new season.  I’ve oftened said that Autumn in Chicago is the most predictable of all seasons found here.  So, it is no surprise to see at least one tree on every residential block setting down an early layer of brown, yellow and orange foliage.  The wind moves these leaves in directions that seem to alert the neighboring trees like an early morning alarm clock.

I noticed Autumn extra early this year, a full three weeks ago in the first days of August.  I don’t know if it was my imagination or not, but I felt something.  I began to look for clues, Autumn clues…  But before too long I was lost in my own thoughts.  And I was running, running through the streets where I live.  I might as well been blindfolded ’cause I have ran that path so many times.  Not taking notice to much around me and deep in thought, like a runner can sometime get, I was on the very edge of some personal insight.  When all of sudden a unusually “cool” breeze blew across my face and a leaf the size of my hand hit my chest and stuck.  Without delay, I snatched it up and looked at it.  It was symetrically perfect but aged with the time from a long Summer.  Though it had accomplished its life’s purpose, in its final moments it fulfilled perhaps the most amazing of miracles.  It gave me a smile. 

I wonder, when I’m gone, how many smiles will I inspire?  I would like to think, just enough to change a life, one life, a little…     I love Autumn…

“My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.” –Robert Frost,American poet