Autumn Leaves

The light coming down into the dirt road early this afternoon divided the woods with broad bluish beams of sun, dust, smoke and shadow – a medium that contains and conducts autumn. The gold beech leaves and green beech leaves, the orange cherry leaves, the lemon yellow, bright gold and old gold hickory leaves, the green hawthorn leaves with glossy black berries and, somehow nearby on the same tree, the yellowing hawthorn leaves with glossy red berries, told each other jokes about the significance of color. Actually, I think they were singing happy little musical comedies about the changing colors. I couldn’t quite make it out, but I could swear one of the scenarios was a satire involving an artist who has to get red and yellow from a tube. 

Further on, maple leaves littered the road, almost all of them half yellow, half red – half fluorescent yellow, half deep scarlet – mottled with black. As I looked ahead, walking, the road was half yellow, half red, mottled with black, the sky half yellow, half red, mottled black, I held out my arms and looked at the palms of my hands, half yellow, half red, and black, my skin had the lingering sheen of a recently fallen leaf.