Please pardon me, it is autumn

The purple ash outside my apartment is being gorgeous. It's hard to be sad too much with such ridiculous beauty going unappreciated. If it weren't impossible to replicate the sun falling through the leaves and the gentle gradation from buttery yellow to illuminated burgundy with veins of green on every leaf, and leaves in bunches and the dark thin branches half hidden, it would be worth learning to paint this single tree. But even then I would still miss the sky's illusory blue, and the ability to reach out and touch the cool smooth rough-edged leaves. All I can do is sit and stare until a box elder beetle lands distractingly in my hair, life pulls me away, and fall passes, taking the colors.

Thankfully, too, or I'd never get anything done.