And just like that, autumn’s height was passed. In single night, single storm, a single wind unnoticed in the dark that felled the greatest of splendor, autumn’s height was ended; and they woke to sodden world naked of the wonder.
Where day before, splendor held, limbs shone naked in their stand; autumn’s cover scattered on the earth as cast of their own clothes strewn before the hearth.
She found him in rest on porch looking out upon the grey; gold of lawn-cast and cover felled into blanket on the grass. She came to him in grey fleece wrap in cover and save of warmth beneath, plush of its make smooth and comforting to her.
He had a way of attunement and becoming as the world, or world becoming as his mood. Sometimes, she did not know which it was she most believed conformed to other. All she knew, in the sodden world, his eyes possessed in mirror a grey of melancholy-change.
Such is autumn’s romance: the evanescence and knowing its wonder and enchantments cannot last—so you love it while it lives.
And after—when beauty and enchantment end—there is still a love enduring, inspired and transcendent of beget evanescence.
Splendor fallen, peak of beauty passed, autumn-love remained. She felt it beneath the grey—saved, covered, retaining of the heat.
It was she this time that went to him in outward gaze upon the world. It was she this time that returned his sight, his energies, and attentions inward to home and sanctuary they had made.
She took his hand and asked his rise—unspoken but with eyes.
Into oak-hewn home they went, afire enkindled in the hearth into whole of flame from embers amongst the ash.
In the intimate of light and heat, her grey cover fell away. Amazement, enchantment, and wonder still remained. She held his face and kissed him deep, reading eyes in pause and searching after; their melancholy, as her body in enkindle, stripped of grey and, beneath, a beauty seen.
She felt his hands, her body’s move—willing in the want. Restore of kiss, love’s telling on as, like leaves and clothes in night, bodies fell to low in strewn and happening of storm.
Height of autumn romance ended; but still there was a love—engendered and transcendent of the evanescence. This, they lived. This, they made; and of the love, a greater romance revealed—created—beyond enchantments and evanescence of a season.