The song of autumn rests just below the threshold of hearing.  Already a growing chorus of rustling leaves rings like a distant bell, one too far to make a clear noise yet too near to be silent.

Trees fully dressed practice their waltz to this music with a dash of color here and the steady dropping of leaves there.  While still but a trickle of fallen foliage, soon each branch will shed its summer clothes for winter’s barren coat.

Then the bones of the world will be revealed.

Cooler temperatures brush us gently as they pass through before giving way to warmth, sometimes days hot by Texas standards.  Yet autumn’s song rings louder and louder, a cooler voice in the seasons’ unbroken melody of change.

Today promises one such dramatic metamorphosis.  Although ordinary by comparison with our seasonal dance, I can barely wait for tonight’s crescendo.

It will be hot this afternoon.  Our high will skirt summer temperatures by only a few degrees.  After that, autumn’s voice will flood the world with its strength as we plummet 35 degrees to our overnight low.  And tomorrow’s high?  Twenty-five degrees cooler than today’s.

But winter’s opening act does not stop there.

Just this morning I enjoyed the sight of the first American white pelicans of the season, winter residents here at the lake who will soon enjoy vast numbers along with a plethora of other avian visitors looking for cold-weather lodging.  They will add their distinct sounds to autumn’s music, and together they will sing a tune that comes but once a year.

So I watch.  More importantly, I listen.  Before I even realize it, the air will be thick with a refrain that heralds the coming winter.  Then autumn will have arrived.

[Update] An interesting change in tomorrow’s forecast: Our low tonight will be the high tomorrow, some 35 degrees cooler than today.  And our chance of rain has gone up for both tonight and, even more so, tomorrow.  Cool, both literally and figuratively.