The advent of Pani Jesień

Summer’s over and the leaves are colouring and falling. That’s the work of Pani Jesień who paints the leaves and sweeps them off the trees and ferments fallen crab apples and deepens the red of rowan berries and swells other berries and allows flowers to flourish into final bloom and opens the spiky horse chestnuts revealing their glossy brown nuts and begins to chill the air.

The leaves crunch and scrunch underfoot and if you lie down amongst them you can watch more fall, twirling their way to the ground. Occasionally one lands on you and you feel blessed. On a windy day from the apartment window you can watch linden helicopters rise to the third floor and whirl their way horizontally from the tree to the road. When you scratch out the seed from a maple samara you find that it is shaped like a tiny heart.

Golden Polish Autumn is on its way.