SONG AT THE BEGINNING OF AUTUMN
Now watch this autumn that arrives
In smells. All looks like summer still;
Colours are quite unchanged, the air
On green and white serenely thrives.
Heavy the trees with growth and full
The fields. Flowers flourish everywhere.
Proust who collected time within
A child’s cake would understand
The ambiguity of this —
Summer still raging while a thin
Column of smoke stirs from the land
Proving that autumn gropes for us.
But every season is a kind
Of rich nostalgia. We give names —
Autumn and summer, winter, spring —
As though to unfasten from the mind
Our moods and give them outward forms.
We want the certain, solid thing.
But I am carried back against
My will into a childhood where
Autumn is bonfires, marbles, smoke;
I lean against my window fenced
From evocations in the air.
When I said autumn, autumn broke.
-Elizabeth Jennings
Gladsome Lights 
Truth. Our first hints of autumn always arrive as scents: often as early as August. A whiff of burning cane fields from Louisiana, a cool, clean breeze from far offshore, the acrid smoke from Mexican manufacturing; they all betoken changes to come.
This weekend, our first real front will arrive, dropping temperatures into the 70s/60s. We’re ready to be groped!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Your comment evocatively expresses the poetry of your locale’s particular seasonal mood in scents – and temps!
LikeLike
What a fantastic poem! But it’s more autumn-y here than there, where you are, I think.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, this is actually the warmest week we’ve had in a month, and I hope it will ripen my figs!
LikeLike