It's a season of endings. Glorious, brilliant departures. The final burst before the drab, dreary Novembers of our souls. The time in the South when we can revel in the softening sunlight that leaves our days too soon in darkness. In the monochromatic Mississippi winter, we'll look wistfully over the horizon for signs of the first hyacinth. Persephone, that goddess of spring, is about to descend into the underworld. This is my favorite time of year, warm with a bittersweet beauty all the more lovely because of its briefness. Each tree vies with the next for brilliance, dropping their colors even as I stroll by.
Soon, these flaming canopies will be anorexic arms stretched before a blank sky. To me, winter is the invisible season: the in-hiding season, the time of drawing to the fire and crossing your arms against the wind outside the door. I enjoy this beauty today with the knowledge of its coming absence. It's the season I always turn to Gerard Manley Hopkins, who beautifully captured the tension of transience.
Spring and Fall
to a Young Child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
