Waiting for autumn color

If you run in to the store to pick up milk, the clerk asks you, "Have you noticed the leaves are  changing?"  Or you might be filling your tank with expensive gas. . . In this climate, with all these sugar maples, watching and waiting for the leaves to turn is the common fare that binds us all together. This picture was taken in mid-October in 2007. We are planning to leave the week before that, so we might miss the best part, but are hoping for some good color anyway. You can always hope. Today we said goodbye to Jeff, the massage guy who works at the senior center here. We've gotten used to his therapeutic care.

Autumn always makes me think about haiku. The sort of melancholy that belongs naturally to autumn (decay, falling leaves, winds, winter coming, summer gone) also belongs naturally to haiku. Many of the great and famous haiku are about autumn,

     This road
no one goes down it,
     autumn evening

     You've heard monkeys crying--
listen to this child
     abandoned in the autumn wind

     This autumn---
why am I growing old?
     bird disappearing among clouds

     Deep autumn---
my neighbor,
     how does he live, I wonder?

These versions of haiku by Basho are all in the Basho section of The Essential Haiku; versions of Basho, Buson and Issa, by Robert Hass, W.W. Norton & Co., 1994.

I have been reading a little book about Issa that I got today and meant to talk about that haiku poet, but this is what happened. And I am yawning and off to bed early.