Impermanence
Autumn.
I don’t get to touch it much these days. I didn’t even get to stop and breathe in the colours last week, when the foliage was at its glowing peak; and now it’s fading, every shade melting to brown.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Housman was speaking of spring, of course. But for me, the warm hues of autumn have always made for the loveliest of trees. Loveliest of trees, the maple now, ablaze with scarlet on the bough!
I used to love tramping about in the woods, most especially in the fall. The heat of summer was finally broken; the loud families had ended their vacations; and as the air grew crisp, I found my way into nature once more.
Now, of my fourscore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
I had but a score of years behind me then, or a few more. And yet it is not so many years now since that time — not so long that I don’t yearn for them, that my body doesn’t miss the clean air I found there just as my soul misses the rest it brought me.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
Yet I never quite seem to learn that lesson. Year after year, summer passes into winter with hardly a glance from me.
That needs to change. I don’t yet know how. But when the opportunity arises, I need to remind myself of the snowy cherry, and the blazing maple.
Poem recited is “Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now” by A.E. Housman.