There is one pure golden leaf lying on my neighbor's lawn. I can see it from where I sit at my computer. I've been watching it for an hour now.

Actually, it's been there since supper time last night when I went out to walk Jack. It's still there, motionless. I choose to see it as an omen, an icon of things to come, the logo of early autumn. The others on his tree haven't dropped yet. I can imagine them sitting up there on their branches talking about this leaf, either impressed with its ground-breaking courage, or weeping at the death of a limb mate.

I'm an animist to my core, one who attributes a soul to plants and inanimate objects. I cling to the fading belief that some supernatural power animates the material universe. Some call it God, Allah, Yahweh or Jehovah. I call it Harry.

These leaves, I believe, are thinking, "There but for the grace of Harry, go I." They know, as we do, that they're next, that they will soon be down there on the grass waiting for the swoop of the rake.

Autumn came yesterday at 11:44, but hardly anyone noticed, what with the election wars and the carnival in Washington trying to keep us all from relearning the songs our grandparents sang, "Big Rock Candy Mountain" and "Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?"

But come it did, and soon after all the other deciduous children started passing the word. It's time to dress for fall. Soon there will be darkness at noon, or so it will seem. After the election, we will all be pitched into blackness of winter.

There will be Chekovian days, with the last globules of sun tinting the birches. It's not Moscow, Trigorin, but it will pass for it.

We will all sit down to the six o'clock news and meatloaf with mashed potatoes, no sassy salads thank you. We are summer's fallen angels preparing for Karamazov nights and Gorky mornings. Yes, Thanksgiving will lighten the gloom, but what will we be thankful for? That depends on which of our choices emerges victorious and how deep the coming depression goes.

We can always fall back on the cheerful words, spoken through gritted teeth, of grandma back in 1932. My mother used them too, and Aunt Winnie at every gathering, "Well," they intoned, "We've always got our health, and each other."

Everyone, even Uncle Jack, the family drunk who was always recovering from some fall or scrape or the other, would chant, "That's for sure." And then someone would say grace, and everyone would fill their mouths with bean soup or cabbage and potatoes or whatever "the Lord" put on our table.

This is a dark year ahead for many.

More than 4,800 families will have an empty chair by the holiday table, and money will be, for many here on this side of the Kittery bridge, hard to come by. Whoever sits in the Oval Office might well be forced to give those old Rooseveltian "fireside chats" that we came to enjoy.

We might resurrect those great cabbage soups and home baked breads. If cable bills get any higher, and they will, we'll be forced back to the living room radio. It won't be the same without Kate Smith or Jack Benny but we'll get by.

Oh dear. There's another leaf next to the first, but not as golden. It's fallen, I'm afraid, before its time as many of our loved ones have in the past seven years. But let's not get too depressed. Those of my generation have been through hard times before and survived.

There goes another leaf. Ah, yes. It's time to dress for fall.

J.P. Devine is a freelance writer living in Waterville.