How many more days will this earth carry us? How many moons to come and go? Watching the sunrise like it’s the first time in a few gracious moments of dawn. Always the same yet somehow newborn daily. Routine hours pass until twilight’s slow descent. The pitch dark dying nightly envelops all to slumber in dreams of life. A candle and a curse away from eternal sleep. Dates and timetables unknown except for the calendar’s predictable jumble of numbers. Months and years accumulate like the dust we question. These days born into the life and times of my sorry brittle bones. The gravity of falling leaves dancing to the brisk crisp air. An inevitable chill leaves no doubt for summer’s farewell. Bid adieu to the heat and humidity. The rains make way for a royal harvest. The snowy days will follow soon enough.
Horns of plenty filled with summer strawberries, sweet corn, watermelons and ripe tomatoes. The scarecrow is not so lonely surrounded by apples, pumpkins and weird gourds. The birds envy this feast. Jealous buzzards circle overhead waiting for the final gasp. Baskets full of season’s cheer, flowers, fruits, wine, abundant cornucopia of the equinox. The moon’s cyclic anarchy rules tides and provokes madness. The planets align with some ancient coordinates pointing to winter’s grand entrance. Always too hot or too cold in this hemisphere. An imaginary dot on the ancient globe spinning around in the library of thought, deciphering the hieroglyphs of emotion.
Going backwards to the distant past, running, jumping and diving into piles of freshly raked leaves. Throwing nature’s confetti around the yard feeling lighter than air. Later burning the dry mounds, crackling brittle twigs and leafy skins of summer. A scent of sorrow rising up from deep inside the fire. That familiar odor of burning leaves long ago smoky September spreading into October bounty. Just another sentimental fool facing a spent year’s end. Like examining strange curios displayed on lace and leather-bound volumes of illustrated memories. Turning the dog-eared pages to bear witness and smell the musty souls within. The encyclopedia of your life from A to Z, the beginning and end of love in the lost and found of a well-worn life.
Marching ever forward into the battle. Onward to the bittersweet ending of another seasonal disorder. Fighting the good fight against all odds for no reason except it’s there. What a world. What a wonderful crazy, mixed-up place to be. Remembering the past and wondering about some distant future. No Farmer’s Almanac could predict this mess. No bible knows natural change as it occurs in real time. Not in parables, horoscopes or songs. Another predicament to resolve. More impediments to get through. Mirages to overcome. Illusions to disprove. Places to be. People to meet or avoid. Facts to face, truths to dispel. Missing those who went away and miss those who’ve gone even more.
Tumbling down the years, chasing dreams and making wishes. Going no place fast and arriving there too soon. The seasons change with or without falling in or out of a life’s grace. Watching the birds fly South once again. The bees are going crazy making ready for the queen’s long winter. Hibernating bears in a den. Insects cocooned. Mammals waiting patiently underground for spring’s sprung. Tiny seeds wait on cue to sprout next year. Wrapped in a blanket of suspended animation waiting perfectly still. There’s frost on the windows. Dew on the ground. Watch your breath come out into cloudy vapors. The nights appear brighter under harvest’s moonlit glow. The trees ablaze with warm colors. The sun’s glare blinding with little warmth. To reap and sow, plant and grow, the reaper knows not when it’s time to depart. It’s the waiting that gets us. Hanging onto stuff and things long past.
Still waiting as particles dance in dark matter. Gray matter is a sponge of brainy ideas waiting. Atoms swirling together with the leaves in the light of day waiting to touch down. A different kind of matter waiting for protons’ static cling to stick with electrons magnetic force putting the puzzle of us together in some crossword half truth of contradictions. Two down and four across… the word for existence. Starts with an L. Going, gone, being, been. A human with conditions. No fancy dangling participle. There is no death. Only dying and the dream of life waiting as the seasons wait.