I wish I could write an essay or a poem on the beauty of Autumn in Minnesota, but words fail me. How can I put into words the beauty of the leaves, trees, grasses, fields? I thought of the phrase, “reckless, flaming red of the sumacs,” but that’s as far as I can get. I can’t think of the correct word or phrase to capture the essence of the leaves of other trees. The “lollipop red of the maples” doesn’t seem quite right, and what words could I use to describe the leaves of ash or elm or beech? Parchment is almost correct for white oak, but it still is not quite it. Orange or yellow or gold, or even saffron or burnt orange or tangerine really can’t capture the complex range of colors upon a tree, much less the stunning beauty of a mass of trees upon a hillside. I have to go back to the Crayola box of 8 colors: red, orange, yellow, brown. Only imagine these colors in a thousand variations, as each leaf loses its chlorophyll individually, as the wind and sunlight play upon them, as differences in their unique places upon the tree or perhaps how much or how little they were affected by drought and insects all play out in these few, fast weeks of Autumn. I have to turn to metaphor or simile: the leaves glow like stained glass or a box of jewels, they burn with their own fire, they shine like miniature suns. No. It’s been done before, and it’s still not right. They are trees, and the changing leaves are what they are: beautiful, indescribable.
I was thinking of this over much of the past few days as we drove to our cabin and back. We passed through mid-Autumn to late as we drove nearly 200 miles north. Here, south of Minneapolis, in the Minnesota River Valley, the leaves are just reaching their peak. North of Brainerd, on the shores of our small lake, most of the leaves have fallen. The oaks still hang on to their leaves, as well as a few sumac, but the birch and aspen and maple have fallen. In between, around St. Cloud and Little Falls, we saw the most color. In the sun on Wednesday, the hills seemed alive with color. I wouldn’t call them burning, for that metaphor seems false, too, but they definitely glowed in the sunshine.
When I searched the internet for poems about Autumn, the authors seemed to reach for purple prose, as in this stanza from “The Fall of the Leaf,” by S. Moore: “How beautiful the maple leaf/While blushing to conceal its grief/Tho’ pleasing in its every stage/Yet still more beautiful in age.” Andrew Downing, in “October,” seemed to struggle with words, too: “Leaves, red as sunset skies-/Leaves, opulent with Tyrian dyes/Or gold, or brown, a glory and surprise!” Other poets wrote about happy Autumn harvests or funereal feelings about the death of the year. Neither of these seemed particularly appropriate, and some were downright depressing.
No, I give up. I cannot come up with the words, and the camera could not capture the colors, either. If I were a painter, I’d try to cover a canvas with Autumn colors, but I think I would fail, too. I would not have the patience to paint a thousand leaves, each a different hue of yellow or orange or red. Perhaps I could paint just one leaf, but even that seems beyond me.
In spring I think of Robert Frost’s poem, “Nothing gold can stay”: “Nature’s first green is gold/Her hardest hue to hold.” Autumn in Minnesota seems to me to demand another poem, but I haven’t been able to find one that evokes this season. Are the leaves defiant against the coming winter, harbingers of sadness, or nature perfected? I cannot say. But I love to see their colors—colors I missed when I lived in the Southwest—and marvel at the beauty held in the mind of the Creator.
For more Autumn poems, visit http://www.blackcatpoems.com.
