This is the time of year that readers of folkpotpourri know to expect the psychological disorder which I call OCPA, obsessive, compulsive prose of autumn, to overtake this writer again. By now y’all know autumn’s my favorite time of the year, so far surpassing other seasons that it would be unfair to even compare them. I understand that I’d be hard-pressed to render a tribute with even a modicum of word smithery, but this is a free website after all, and everyone knows you get what you pay for, so just indulge me. Besides today is the last day of summer, so it’s technically not fall yet – things are just getting warmed up (to cool down). Anyways, we need something peaceful to think about with all the bad things going on in the world. Here goes:
Fallow hickory breezes blow through silent dales as the Celestial palette again waxes encumbered neath thickening shades of pastel grown prepared to cloak brooding gum trees now grown weary of their verdant apparel of yesterday’s springtime blessing. Blissfully now the normally irascible crow cheers this scintillation of the whispered taste of autumn being offered, generous harbinger of the temperate weeks of summer’s wan from haze and endless days of imposing heat. As fall expires, however, this same cantankerous bird will be among the loudest of those carping of the cold.
Great white oaks undulate in joyful dance upon azure heavens as they beckon a north wind to bring forth splendid new autumn attire, eager to don whichever hue the Master has granted for what surely will become another fete of autumnal majesty, held but for another day, another week perhaps, but soon, nevertheless. The dogwood has already begun to loudly emerge from the sylvan dressing chamber, cloaked in another gown of magnificent copper and abundantly bespecled with crowds of bright red berries clinging to her laden branches.
Such is their eagerness to display this year’s boisterous scarlet, poison ivy wends among hickory tops, singing loudly their familiar, red-shaded aria to herald fall’s arrival. As his leaves become gilded with a tint of gold that only the Master artist could produce, the hickory patiently and silently awaits his turn to sing his fallow song – and sing he will, but anon as crisp wind flies upon the hills. Soon icy fingers shall grasp tender green branches intent upon splashing autumn colors on all.
Halls of indescribable splendor will soon grace somber hills of misty silence, all decorated by the same Master whose unmatched attention to beauty and peaceful serenity of a perfectly decorated hillside compasses this sylvan world. The gaudy black gum and sumac are the appetizer, sufficient themselves to sate any hunger for magnificence, yet they only tantalize – fallow hickory and shades of red and rust of stately oaks, and the highly prized yellow and pastel orange of the maple are the main course. Thank God for the beauty He has bestowed upon us!
He created this excellent world of color for our eyes to enjoy – then he created our eyes such that we can enjoy it!
Enjoy autumn as y’all are able to get out, and may God bless all.
MK