It came through the neighborhood riding a hard-breathing wind, trailing a sudden graveyard chill along behind it.

The smallest trees bent and bowed in submission, as if they knew their angel of death had come to summon them; leaves leapt from their branches to follow, like soldiers running off to join a crusade for golden treasure and crimson glory.

As the wind pushed past me, it made me want to hurry inside for the warm, safe lights of home and family, as if I'd seen a wolf on the loose, lumbering through our sleepy suburban lawns.

Sure enough, I saw the footprints of fall the next morning.

The sky was the color of brushed stainless steel, and the rain that lurked behind a damp chill asked me for a jacket.

Most of the time, we think of the changing seasons as little white squares on a desktop calendar. Sept. 22: Autumn begins. They are like those arbitrary dotted black lines on a map, that separate Ohio from Michigan or Florida from Georgia.

But the observant traveler can see how the landscape makes subtle changes at state borders. Michigan gets piney. Florida gets palmy. Arizona sprouts saguaros. Indiana sprouts corn.

Maybe the lines are not so arbitrary after all.

And maybe it was not just my imagination working late - maybe autumn actually did arrive at 8:15 on a Tuesday night.

I know this much: One day we are enjoying the last lingering goodbye kiss of summer's cornflower-blue September skies, wishing we were not too busy to enjoy the best days of the season that somehow sifted to the bottom of the box like a prize in a box of Cheerios.

Then the next day, we're rummaging through dresser drawers to haul out sweat shirts and bulky wool sweaters that feel scratchy and comfortable at the same time, like a grandfather's hug.

Suddenly we're harvesting the last lonesome fruits on the stalks, and starting to get that hunker-down, apple-cider, build-a-fire feeling of November just around the next bend in a country road.

When I lived in southern Arizona for 10 years, I was surprised to wake up one late September morning and realize that autumn was the season I missed most. There are Arizona aspens that turn gold in the high canyons, and even pumpkins to carve. But it's not the same. Without scarlet maples, the aspens look incompletely dressed, like a woman who forgot her lipstick. Pumpkins look as lost in the desert as a tall cactus on Fountain Square.

Fall is a tonic. Smelling salts for the soul. A wake-up call after a lazy summer nap.

In the brilliant crimson of just one swirling maple leaf, all the sunrises and sunsets of July are distilled. In the cheerful yellow of a single hickory leaf, I see all the joy of June mornings. In the exuberant orange of oak leaves, I feel the patient fire of an August afternoon. Each leaf is a poem.

We still have green summery days left. But after the first chill, we've seen the bottom of the jar and we know they are not going to last forever. And that's OK. Endless summer would be endlessly tiresome, like too many rides on the Ferris wheel at the county fair.

It's time to fall in love with the poetry of fall again.

"Listen! the wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves,

"We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!''

-- Humbert Wolfe (1885-1940)

E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.