The Fragrance Of Fall

Thank you, God, for the heady fragrance of fall. This spicy scent of leaves and drying grasses, this perfume of the harvest - apples and grapes and orange pumpkins bright on roadside stands. As if the world is busiily blending its wonders into some essence that haunts the soul even as it signals the year's end.

This nip and tingle of fall on a frosty morning, Lord, biting deep into the senses. This mellow fall fragrance on a sunny afternoon - stirring yet more serene. .. But in the evening, ah in the evening, when a new moon is rising and smell of dinner lingers and children beg to scuff the leaves, hunting acorns for school - then the fragrance of fall is a kind of insistent presence, blood-invading.

It breathes of lost people far away in distant places, ancestors camping on ancient hillsides. It speaks of forests when our own country was mysterious and new. It echoes the smoke of fires in little log huts, with lndians lurking.
It speaks of home. It speaks of happiness.

Now ...now! it seems to be urging. Be grateful for this moment. For home and husband and children and friends and all that you have and are. Breathe it, taste it, feel it - it holds the very essence of life, to be savored.

Thank you, God, for this heady fragrance of fall.