I hate autumn. I hate the trees losing their greenness, losing their protective garments, losing that which conceals their true colors and forces them to expose their trueness to the world.

Autumn truly is the last hoorah. The last burst of life before death covers the world and all that is left is the skeleton of life.

I dislike the unpredictability of the weather. Of shiver through the morning, sweating through the afternoon, then shivering again through the night.

I dislike the smell of burning leaves. Nothing but a funeral pyre of what was once beautiful, green, and bursting with life sustaining nutrients.

Maybe nature is too close to my reality. I’m in the early autumn of my life now – late middle age. I’m not ready to let the greeness of youth give way to my true colors, colors which not even I know. I’m not ready expose my true self to world, to let others marvel at my loveliness one last time before I’m a naked skeleton useful for only ridicule or worse yet, pity.

Maybe nature is too close to my mother who is in the late autumn of her life. Only one or two leaves left on her cold brittle branches. Leaves so small no one but a few left to remember how she sheltered us from storms. She herself has no memory of that, or of anything else. Still, those last few leaves cling with stubborn dignity to her weak and bent skeleton.

I’ve never liked autumn