Open your window. Slip between those cool sheets. Pull a thick comforter all the way up to your nose. And sigh heavily or … heavenly. Because it is that time of the year.

Barely a bird or a cricket is chirping in the inky night air, but the smells … the smells.

It is autumn. It is fall. And …

“Every leaf speaks bliss to me 
Fluttering from the autumn tree.” Emily Brontë

Yes. Yes. I am going to wax lyrical. I can’t help it. ‘Tis the season when words tumble from the mouths of poets and scribblers like overripe fruit falling off trees.

“That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold.” William Shakespeare.

When I was younger and wilder and more rambunctious, autumn was my favorite season. I was then very much different from the somewhat tamer me that I am now. This older version of me gravitates towards summer and spring. Or, I think I do. However, in truth, I am a lot like the girl in Finnian’s Rainbow who sings “When I’m not near the boy I love, I love the boy I’m near.” When I’m not in the season I love … you get the point.

I’m fickle. But I’m faithfully fickle, because yesterday … today … tomorrow … there is absolutely no question that autumn is Number One on my Hit Parade.

O hushed October morning mild…
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away. Robert Frost

Poets are not alone in singing autumn’s praise. Lyricists do it, too. And they sing it … in song!

When Nat King Cole intones “Autumn Leaves,” the air is tinged with a sweet, seasonal melancholy.

“Since you went away the days grow long

And soon I’ll hear old winter’s song

But I miss you most of all my darling

When autumn leaves start to fall.”

For Frank Sinatra, too, a nip in the air reminds us of … lost love? Found love? Inopportune love?

Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December

But the days grow short when you reach September

When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame

One hasn’t got time for the waiting game.

Nor can we forget … we NEVER could forget … Ella Fitzgerald singing “Autumn in New York.” And this one is so good, I’ll give you two stanzas!

“This autumn in New York
Transforms the slums into Mayfair
Oh, autumn in New York
You'll need no castles in Spain

“Yes, lovers that bless the dark
On the benches in Central Park
Greet autumn in New York
It's good to live it again.”

Truly. Truly. Such an evocative season. Even movies feel its allure, and with just about every May-December love affair ever told, a film has been made to romanticize its seductive allure. My all-time favorite celebration of autumn, however, is firmly rooted in my childhood, when every October, like clockwork, the Chicago Tribune published “Injun Summer” as predictably as every other newspaper published versions of “’The Night Before Christmas” on Christmas eve.

Written by editorial cartoonist John C. McCutchen in 1907, it recalls cornfields from his Indiana childhood. His drawing depicts a young boy standing beside his seated grandfather, who is explaining, in the dialect of the era, how the stacked-up corn shocks are really the spirits of “Injun tents, sure as you're a foot high. See 'em now? Sure, I knowed you could. Smell that smoky sort o' smell in the air? That's the campfires a-burnin' and their pipes a-goin'.”

Grandpa explains that autumn leaves change color “when an old Injun sperrit gits tired dancin' an' goes up an' squats on a leaf t'rest. Why I kin hear 'em rustlin' an' whisper in' an' creepin' 'round among the leaves all the time; an' ever' once'n a while a leaf gives way under some fat old Injun ghost and comes floatin' down to the ground. See — here's one now. See how red it is? That's the war paint rubbed off'n an Injun ghost, sure's you're born.”

I have a framed color print of “Injun Summer” hanging on the wall in my office, and if I tilt my head just so, I can see mellow autumnal colors and wisps of smoke rising from corn stalks … or is it the spirits of “Injun tents?”

I loved “Injun Summer,” and was saddened when political correctness cowed the newspaper into discontinuing its annual publication. Which, to me, was as stupid as finding offense in Jewish fables about The Wise Men of Chelm, just because all of them were amiable and entertaining fools.

But that’s another story.

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2026. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit www.shellyreuben.com