Autumnal Heart  

By
Paul Golden

I sit in a shaded corner of the square where I can observe yet be unnoticed.

It’s growing colder now as autumn rapidly dwindles to winter, and as I look beyond my bench opposite where the sun still offers some life, light and warmth, I notice the decaying yellows of the beach trees against a wall of paling greens of the London Plane. The leaves seem to put up one last valiant burst of life in the sunlight before cascading lightly to the ground and gracefully dying to brown. Against this wall of greens and canary yellows a lone young Japanese maple, in vibrant purple and burgundies, like a flaming phoenix most radiant before the inevitable demise.

The peripheral noises of traffic and urban life fade into the background. I hear the gentle breeze talking to the trees, coaching the leaves to their cold graves below, gently bearing them slowly earth-bound in a swing-like motion and placing them on the bed of greying-green grass.

A young mother and child stroll through the frame, although I cannot clearly now make out distant facial expressions I imagine the care and love in the mother’s face and her creating gentle playful noises to the baby she carries. Years of love & joy, frustration & heartache ahead, the luxury of time.

A young couple sit under one of the beach trees chatting in quiet intense tones, looking into each other’s eyes discovering one another. A stillness around them they only see the other, no one else exists for them now – a beginning.

A group of university students pass by, I don’t follow them – too much life, too much hope, too much blissful ignorance.  My eyes trail away and then I see them, sitting there on their usual bench wrapped up in warm winter wear an elderly couple, greying soft faces and pleasant countenance.

 Life-worn expressions, bespectacled, observing, remembering, re-feeling emotions once dear and vibrant. They sit in a comfort and familiarity nurtured over many years, an almost symbiotic relationship not requiring communication – the feeling of wholeness, oneness, completeness, no pangs or aches of emptiness there. Sitting muffled together, he quietly slips his hand into hers, she accepts it with no other acknowledgment - it is enough they know, they belong. A lifetime of learning, accepting, compromising has brought them here to this place, this time, their comforting reality of intimacy, and the quiet acceptance of a hand the ultimate culmination. 

As the mother and baby pass by again the seated couple exchange warm smiles squeezing each other’s hand, a shared memory from a pooled lifetime.

My vision blurs, like gentle rain on a cars’ windscreen, emotions and memories buried deep within and long ago. A shudder at the chillness of an approaching winter. My eyes wander back to the lone Japanese Maple in all its fire-like burst of glory refusing to fade away into the background, living out it’s allotted seasonal allowance to the full and to the admiration of all around – perfection.