Fall

And so it begins. The march into Fall. 

The black walnuts begin the parade as always, dropping their leaves as quickly as they gained them in the Spring. How odd, though, to see the ground littered with brown bodies when the temperature is as hot as it got all season. The air cries “SUMMER!”  But nature whispers “fall”.

Friday night I heard the “gabble ratchet” of wild geese. They were there again last night and this morning, so I am thinking they are gathering in the field by the river, waiting for their friends to join them before they go further. The birdsongs have started to slip from their summer tunes to their travelling tunes. The poison ivy and poison sumac are beginning to blaze red, and Orion is tracking his prey to the south.

 I’ve always loved fall, but this year not so much. This year it feels more like I’ve ticked off one more year without accomplishing anything worthwhile. 

The geese are gathering, the songbird tunes shifting, the leaves changing and dropping and I sit in a trap of my own building and watch the teardrops fall.