I feel it in my bones, the gradual chilling of the days and the yellowing evenings turning darker ever earlier...the morning fog in the valleys limiting the views of the hills beyond.
I can smell the wood burning, escaping the brick chimneys in languid gray smoke, and I remember the feel of flames crackling in the fireplace, warming and engulfing the first thin pieces of wood that we gradually slowly fed...pieces getting slightly larger...this orange yellow and blue beast consuming everything we placed in it.
I can traverse the leaf-lined walkways...the scent of decaying leaves, wet from cold morning rains and they mute my footsteps...no longer merely crunching under my boots but now soggy, furled and scattered.
Mushed and crumpled. Waiting to be absorbed once again by the earth from which they first rose.
The sunburnt skin is long gone. The colors of the earth become blended into mere shades of browns, the color of earth, the color of dirt...the colors you see when you close your eyes.
Fall is all about dying...briefly, colorfully.
It churns the dirt like blades plowing, slight graves for seeds and crop...until the winter glaze can enshrine it in its marble.
