autumn's healing hues

Art inspiration: “The Lake in Autumn” / Guy Dessapt (Oil on Canvas)

. . .

There is a sweetness to this exchange. The taste of salt in the air at high tide, a cloudless sky giving way to crisp, cool mornings with generous whiffs of caramel and cinnamon stirring her from her slumber. An unread novel flutters its pages by the bay window, warming to the touch of the coffee’s rising steam.

The season’s first leaves dutifully begin their task, trees seemingly competing for the deepest shade of crimson, the most dazzling golden hue. Scattered apples lay ripe for the picking at children’s feet as wicker baskets are filled, cider and pies served under twinkling lights of the gazebo.

Evergreens, lonely witnesses, bid their neighbors farewell amid unrelenting rain that glistens on pavements, creating puddles in forgotten corners of the street.

The city’s pace seems slower, somehow. Cyclists rise at the break of dawn, catching the first glimmers of saturated sunlight bathing the brownstones in their glow. A sparrow lands whimsically on a wilting branch, observing from its alcove the mothers that push strollers with dexterity, pausing on occasion to breathe in the revitalizing mix of heat and the beginnings of a sharp chill.

Under the breeze of the sycamore tree, her hair flutters as she sketches her muse: tawny leaves shrouding uneven buildings in the distance, the landscape dotted with their fallen counterparts for good measure. She wonders how many before her gazed at these same colors, artists and poets and lovers feeling an inexplicable, mesmerizing bond with the foliage, its bold, masterful awakening.

She wraps the shawl tighter around her frame, eyes wandering to the golden retriever that stops to sniff at a fallen leaf, the intertwined fingers of the elderly couple that wander these cobblestone paths each evening before dusk.

The last stretches of sun kiss the hilltops to the west, silhouettes of bare branches casting shadows on the sidewalk, the sounds of the city growing quieter by the hour.

The bookstore owner closes shop for the night, the last fumes of hot chocolate from the neighboring café enveloping passersby who share them, heads bent toward each other, savoring their warmth. The traveling violinist tips his hat in greeting before resuming his rendition of Moon River.

Moonlight illuminates jagged tree trunks and dried-up leaves that crumble at the touch, new growth already blossoming in the roots of its previous home, unseen to the eye.

Like them, her pain has taken on a new pigment.

Somewhere across town, a faint descent of snow coats branches rising to the occasion. Nature’s grand finalé fills the hollowness of yesterday with a soothing new vibration, beckoning a broken heart to beat again — slowly, then all at once.