perhaps you know this thing called autumn — that majestic, short-lived, wide-eyed-wonderment season. the longer i consider it, the more ironic it becomes. that which ought to be somber and sad, the passing of all the leaves and foliage around us — is instead flung open with passion, a last taste of vibrance before winter’s quiet sets in. you cannot not love fall; and how is it that i cannot help but feel alive amidst the fanfare of dying colors?

i speak from my own experience, though it is incredibly small. i have a few memories of a “proper autumn” (colorful trees, crisp air, the hint of visible breaths, and so on) as a child, but the colors in my memory are now as faded as those in the photographs; only a faint echo of crunching leaves remains. i spent most of my adolescence in california, where there is no autumn (is so little alive enough to die?), and i spent college in texas. autumn in texas is somewhat official — the trees change colors, anyway, but oak trees turn brown and not red or orange, and one feels the sense of passing more than the celebration in the texas fall.

the first time i was truly struck by autumn’s glory was the year i spent in london. i arrived in september for graduate school and had managed to get my heart broken along the way. i wanted a particularly dreary autumn, as if it would be some kind of testimony to the bleakness i felt within. instead, i woke up one morning and found that the great tree outside of my window had audaciously begun to turn red. the leaves were soft, still on the trees, and ferociously defiant. i watched that tree day by day, gradually changing in its entirety, and my morning jogs through regent’s park — fantastically set afire with shades of red and orange i had never imagined — confirmed my suspicion: in small ways many things die, but not always in defeat.

it was a particularly cherishing epiphany in many ways: i marveled at the irony, and then discovered that the true miracle was the consistent rebirth. the trees themselves were not dead — just as i was not dead. broken hearted, perhaps, and hurt, and some parts of me had been shed, but i was still very much alive. and when the leaves finally fluttered off the tree, brittle and cold, they seemed to leave behind the promise of spring.

all of this comes to mind because i went to new hampshire this weekend, amazed once again (years later now) by the magnificence of autumn. and since this is my blog and i can write what i want :), i decided a tribute to autumn was in order. this post is followed by one of pictures from the weekend, and then several autumn poems i treasure — by members of my family (me included).