Ode to Autumn

In Minnesota, I liked to spend an afternoon in the park I grew up in, Irvine Park, watching as the lush greens of summer faded to yellow, orange, red. I would imagine the sap of the trees slowing into thick syrup within the trunks, the moisture from each leaf sucking back into the branches and deep down into the ground, into the roots. Those big oaks seemed to harden as the air turned crisp. Even in the city, the smell of burning leaves would blow through the branches with a hush, the dusty, dying skeletons of summer joy wistfully falling to their deaths in the grass. On a really breezy day it would feel like the inside of a snowglobe must seem, a tornado of leaves mixed with the first falling snowflakes, spiraling around and around in one last dance. In the first cold days before wearing a parka I would hug my sweater over my knees and bury my mouth into the warm weave of wool, the heat from my breath warming my legs for a brief second until the arctic gust had past. The leaves would tumble across to the sidewalks and pool in the hundreds, a flood of scraping brittle bodies skidding to rest in shrubs and flowerbeds. If I were wearing my glasses, the steam would fog the lenses and blend all of the colors of the leaves. I would squint and pick my palette for my next painting. A splash of burnt sienna, mustard edges and brick red around the border... a kaleidoscope of hues and tones, some dark and wet from the still warm earth meeting winter. What color would the hissing sound be? Burnt umber, perhaps. With dark brown cores.