Speaking of autumn

Plum trees, who speak so eloquently of spring, don't have much to say about autumn. Their leaves, now mostly a drab green, fall without any colorful commentary. Persimmon trees deck themselves out for autumn by shedding all their leaves to show bright burdens of orange fruit.

Maple trees, on the other hand, are the glamour stars of autumn -- red or green plastic maple leaves dress up take-out sushi boxes or station box lunches. Star-shaped maple leaves, stitched out in gold thread, adorn kimono obi in Asakusa or the Ginza. Delicate o-higashi, confections of rice flour and sugar, with their tinted maple leaf forms fill showcases of traditional sweet shops. The elegant clear soup, o-suimono, served at the end of meals, is given a seasonal touch of orange with a small maple leaf cut from a slice of carrot.

It seems the maple just can't get enough attention. Daily television weather reports track the approaching koyo, autumn foliage, by showing tiny maple leaf symbols creeping southward down the map of Japan. Even the word itself, koyo, can be read with the alternative pronunciation of momiji -- maple. And momiji-gari, leaf-viewing, tour buses chug up, down and around Hakone, Nikko, and Kyoto in search of those colorful stars. Hung from telephone poles or festooned along shopping streets are plastic garlands of gaudy red, orange, or yellow maple leaves. Wherever one's eyes alight, the blindingly brilliant foliage of autumn maples blazes brightly across calendars, postcards, advertising posters, and, of course, on the real trees outdoors too.

But it's the cherry tree, so flamboyant in April, that is most sublime tree of autumn. It does not shout like the dazzling red or yellow maples. With leaves of salmon, bronze, copper, yellow, green and ruby red, the cherry tree glows with sunset light. Cherry leaves are especially fine after a rain when, slick and shiny, they lie on wet asphalt like a shoal of ornamental carp foundering on a black beach.

Laid out before me now are a dozen still-wet leaves picked up from the sidewalk outside my office. From the office window I have a view of a stand of three cherry trees and in the late afternoon after the clouds have parted, the last of the November light catches the tops of those trees sparking them with flashes beaten copper, salmon pinks, soft yellows, and reds while the dark sinuous branches twist and course like inky black rivers down to the damp earth.

This first leaf is pear yellow with the brown freckles of ripeness. This one is a dark, ruby lick of flame. Here is one plum-sized, with veins etched brown. This one bears all the colors of its history: one edge is the fresh green of spring, towards the center are darker spots of summer green, the other edge is dandelion yellow and copper red. The whole leaf is mottled with brown age spots and the tapering tip has been chewed off by insects.

This is the season of the empty nest, when the sound of tires on wet pavement seems to hiss of journeys and parting; when the crisp, apple-cider air clears the head of drowsy summer thoughts and the mind turns to appraising another year well-lived.

The cherry tree with its variegated palette, remembering spring and letting go of summer, hangs its colors in the slanted sunlight to say without shouting, without fanfare -- this is what I've done this year, this is what I've accomplished.

-- mjk