Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core …

— John Keats, “To Autumn”

October light! October color! Ripeness to the core! We share the poet’s pleasure in this season of earthly delight. But we know it will not last. As one of the earliest English poets put it over a millennium ago:

A little while the leaves are green;
then they fallow again, fall to the earth,
and die, turn to dust.

The falling leaf is an ancient trope for decline and fall, and we mortals tend to take it personally. “I have lived long enough,” lamented Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

… my way of life
Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have.

Yes, of course. We know where this autumnal existence is headed. Even the finest October day contains the seeds of melancholy. The cold and the dark draw near. But if we can take the long view, these too shall pass.

Pamela Steed Hill says this so poignantly in her poem, “September Pitch”:

Mama, the autumn is deep.
Its pitch is only beginning, and will brighten
before the end. Brighten
into darkness,
or into spring.

Here in America, the darkness is already here. As we approach the most consequential—and potentially catastrophic—election of our lifetime, we wonder whether our present world can in fact brighten into spring. If there ever were a time to keep the faith, it is now.

A few days ago I happened to hear on the radio a beautiful autumn song by Jennifer Cutting, encouraging us to move into the unknown with a trusting spirit, come what may.

To know the joy of letting go
The giddy flight of falling
Surprise at softly landing so
Among the leaves of autumn

And though the last refuse to fall
And cling for fear of changing
October overcomes our song
Among the leaves of autumn

O bitterness can shrivel dead
What gratitude made rosy
The brown leaves curl beside the red
Among the leaves of autumn

What was will never be again
What will be is uncharted
What’s now is change, so let’s begin
Among the leaves of autumn

I have set the song link between autumnal images, which I invite you to contemplate as you listen. Grace and peace to you in this season of change.

Photographs by the author.