Predictions for Autumn

We don't mean to get ahead of ourselves--it is still summer, after all--but we suspect that you might be as thrilled as we are with the nearness of autumn and all that it signifies. Hats, scarves, new crushes, noisy leaves, blown-out skies above the dying trees, a crackling of electricity and expectations of a new year--the rushing in of evening as you lean against the wall outside the library waiting for Mama to pick you up in the Volvo stationwagon.

Or, less suburban, as in a poem by Douglas Livingstone called "Lake Morning in Autumn:"

Before sunrise the stork was there
resting the pillow of his body
on stick legs growing from the water.

A flickering gust of pencil-slanted rain
swept over the chill autumn morning;
and he, too tired tired to arrange

his wind-buffeted plumage,
perches swaying a little,
neck flattened, ruminative,

beak on chest, contemplative eye
filmy with star vistas and hollow
black migratory leagues, strangely,

ponderously alone and some weeks
early. The dawn struck and everything,
sky, water, bird, reeds

was blood and gold. He sighed.
Stretching his wings he clubbed
the air; slowly, regally, so very tired,

aiming his beak he carefully climbed
inclining to his invisible tunnel of sky,
his feet trailing a long, long time.

As Oprah is fond of saying, these things I know for sure: straight eyebrows (as opposed to arched ones) and hats are coming back strong, ready to be loved again.