Fall In All

Tonight I walked two miles in my quiet neighborhood under the bland stare of the full moon. I could not stop looking up. Charged with silver light, gauzy shreds of clouds drifted over the glowing sightless cyclops that has seen it all ... everything there has been to see, since God put it there. So many falls! So much is falling. Night is falling faster each day, causing sleepy eyelids to fall. Temperatures are falling; leaves are falling; sleeve lengths are falling. From the huge oak, the elderly sentinel that stands watch over our house, the acorns are falling so rapidly that I imagine the fat squirrels in the branches are playing a toss game. The acorns hit hard and bounce-roll the length of the roof's pitch, doing a sprightly tap dance in staccato Morse code. Occasionally I can even hear the plish as one hits the pool and settles languidly to the bottom, where it will pass the winter in the deep end.

October is falling from the calendar and from all time, like the year. The year started and progressed as they all do: with the brittle skittering sunlight piercing the thin air of winter, which softened into the fickle winds and cosseting warmth and gentle color of spring, which deepened into summer's long siege of oven-hotness perfumed with nodding honeysuckle and punctuated with the whirring of ten billion tiny wings. Now the year is so fragile, so far gone, any moment now and the final snap! of a twig will send it toppling from the world like a plump raindrop sliding off a bird's beak.

As I walked tonight, in the velvety rustle of still-green leaves I imagined I could smell both the loamy deciduous decay of dwindling fall and the cool, delicate verdancy of future springs. Life and death were all around me and I was not afraid of either. In the near distance I heard a long melancholy bleat torn from the throat of a train, and as I listened to the strident subtext beneath that music, the dakdak-dakdak of iron wheels on iron rails, I imagined that the cars bore the freight of years away into the darkness. When I hear that sound, if I look closely I can see the sorrows before me as clearly as the sorrows behind me ... so I don't look. But still, sometimes, tears fall. They fall for bells that cannot be unrung as much as for bells that will never be rung. Sorrow squares off against joy in an endless showdown, determination writ large in the tense and eager stance of each.

The moon's indifferent gaze followed me home, its milky light becoming the buttery light pouring from my windows. Grateful for that sight, I closed the door of my happiness against the certainty of fall and all that follows.

Comments

[Deppfest]

Beautiful, Jenny.

[Jenny]

Thanks luv.

[Audrey]

Wow, that was amazing! Probably your best ever. Gave me chillbumps just to read it. I could see exactly what you were expressing. Awesome.

Love,

Audrey

[Jenny]

Thanks Audge, and thanks for reading!