I found myself in The Boston Garden at dusk Tuesday.  All the leaves had finally fallen off the trees, and had been blown into big piles, prepared for disposal, leaving a jarringly deep green lawn exposed.  There was something poignant about that—the combination of lush lawn—the color deepened by the failing light—and the naked trees. 

We have had a more or less perfect autumn this year, even the most hardened Yankee nags and complainers have to admit, but this part is still poignant for me.  After the mess from the party's been all cleaned up and the hall is emptied out and closed for the season.  That's kind of how it feels this time of year.  

As I walked around the Garden alone I thought of that Tom Wait's song, "November":

No shadow
No stars
No moon
No cars
November
It only believes
In a pile of dead leaves
And a moon
That's the color of bone

No prayers for November
To linger longer
Stick your spoon in the wall
We'll slaughter them all

November has tied me
To an old dead tree
Get word to April
To rescue me
November's cold chain

Made of wet boots and rain
And shiny black ravens
On chimney smoke lanes
November seems odd
You're my firing squad
November

With my hair slicked back
With carrion shellac
With the blood from a pheasant
And the bone from a hare

Tied to the branches Of a roebuck stag
Left to wave in the timber
Like a buck shot flag

Go away you rainsnout
Go away blow your brains out
November

Of course it's not as bad as all that.  I mean, you have to consider the source, here, but there's something deliciously despairing in November that Waits—who's sort of the Minstrel of Melancholia anyway—captures with his gloriously lugubrious dirge. 

I believe in taking full advantage of the seasons, of the weather.  And in late autumn Melancholic introspection is the order of the day. 

Emerson wrote: "Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience." And my pace and patience were rewarded as I emerged from the garden, to this lovely view of Newbury Street at sunset: