Free Fall into Autumn

It's my favorite time of year and it has come just in the nick of time. I need to see the colors orange, red, brown and gold on the trees and on the ground. I have to smell "crisp" in the air. I must take into my lungs a cooler, cleaner, drier but more flavorful mixture of air and oxygen that hints of my childhood and tastes like past joys. It is imperative that I crunch when I walk and that I wonder over the veins of a single leaf that carry an ever changing color from end to end. Pumpkins and corn stalks and hay bales and scarecrows and chrysanthemums rule my world now and I welcome their edicts. They seem to say that I should slow down and bid a fond farewell to the obvious while paying attention to the subtle things that surround me but never demand attention. Now that I'm paying attention to them I wonder how they could have been so silent, so patient and so lovely without having been noticed before. Fall moves in slow motion and thankfully comes when I'm in no hurry.