
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, October 16, 1995                   TAG: 9510160088
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

AUTUMN RHAPSODY

OVER THE summer, I seem to have forgotten fog. But here it is again, in all its great variety: ground mists, wisps of vapor, heavy weeping clouds, mysteriously moving veils.

I'd also forgotten woodsmoke in the air, the way it smells when it curls and loops from chimneys, the way it smells when it's caught and cooled overnight in fog.

And the tick of electric baseboards coming to life; their dusty, hot odor. The scratch of mice in the walls. Incessant, every night. The comfort of an extra quilt, the multiple pleasures of soup, sweaters, wet leaves plastered against the windshield, pine straw, hot tea, the sight of my own breath puffing out in clouds.

I like fall. I like winter better. (Remind me of this when I complain of the cold, the rain, the ice. Whatever. Complaints come easily, too.)

Of course, it's easy to rhapsodize on chilly air and long, long nights when one has - and has always had - reliable central heat, bountiful hot water and adequate food. ``Now it is autumn and the falling fruit/and the long journey towards oblivion,'' wrote D. H. Lawrence some 70 years ago. ``Have you built your ship of death, O have you?/O build your ship of death, for you will need it.''

Admittedly, Lawrence tended toward the gloomy. But certainly he spoke for many when he remembered that winter's arrival would mean breaking the ice out of the top of the pitcher just to wash his face.

During our apocalyptic ice storms, when I was without heat or electricity, I wore wool socks (two pairs), long johns, sweat pants, insulated undershirt, sweatshirt, flannel shirt, full-length bathrobe and stocking cap. In the house. All the time. Even in bed. I never got warm. Chill on the brow and in the breast The frost of years is spread - Soon we shall take our endless rest With the unfeeling dead. Insensibly, ere we depart, We grow more cold, more kind: Age makes a winter in the heart, An autumn in the mind.

John Sparrow. Part viii of his ``Grave Epigrams.'' Not much of rhapsody there, eh?

And yet, this morning, the fog unfurls in cool, chiffon ribbons across the yard, silvering the heavy grass, dropping diamonds from the wet, red dogwood leaves. Windfall apples lie scattered like frosted jewels.

Wet paw prints dotted the sill of my office door when I arrived here this morning; and as I put out birdseed, crows sailed overhead, in and out of the mist, stunningly graceful angels.

Yes, I'm cold too often now, and, no, that doesn't make me grow more kind. Yes, my hands often ache with arthritis, and, yes, leaf mold and wood smoke make me wheeze. But I'm glad, all the same, to remember, this morning, fog. To remember the extra quilts and cups of soup to come. To remember the sere and solemn pleasures of life stripped down to bones.

Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times columnist.

by CNB