Hail October, by Hal Boyle

 If the Lord whispered in your secret heart that you had but one month to live, and let you pick that month, which would you choose?

 I'd say October. 

The birds love it, the beasts love it, and man himself then stands upon the summit of the year. 

October is all the other seasons wrapped into a thirty-one day grab bag package tied with a rainbow ribbon. 

  It is the period when Mother Nature, the great dramatist, brings her traveling roadshow to a climax.

 This is the month that, like a cider press, squeezes out the best juices of all the other months; 

 the promise of spring, the sultry days of summer, the afterglow of autumn, the premonitory chill of winter. 

Everything that walks the earth feels an amber thrill, a tremendous, bubbling vitality that sings in the pulse. 

Now is the glory of the universe manifest. And in the mighty pageant of the hills, each patch of woods elects its own tree beauty queen. You like the dogwood? We don't quarrel. I'll take the maple, that yellow torch. 

It's as if everyone suddenly had been given magic color glasses. 

The stars bend nearer, and that big blob of moon - a child feels it is so close he could reach out with a knife and spread it on his bread like butter.

from Pixabay

The stag stamps in the hilltop and lifts an amorous bugle to the night. 

The squirrel, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, becomes an annual miser. 

The bear invests his excess profits in fat, planning to live off the stored capital until he emerges from his hibernation next spring, cross and bankrupt. 

The wind at night now has become a violin, playing a love song for the young, a last tune of youth to the old. Do you stay awake to hear it? You'd better. He only plays a little while, this wandering fiddler in the dark.

October wears a crown, and makes every man a king. It bears the harvest superiority of the rounded apple over the petalled flower, the advantage fruition and achievement have over pale promises.

 April is the fledgling politician of the year saying, "Stick with me, we'll go places". October, the mature statesman, holding up the golden reward. 

There's no tax on it, so spend it while you have it. No October lasts forever, and there is no guarantee it will ever come again.

*again, about Hal Boyle