Autumn's Promise

 

This is the kind of day I was made for.  The air is ripe with flavor.  And desperation.  The slanted sun warms slowly now, dappling through the changing leaves and kissing the top of my hooded sweatshirt.  But there is nothing slow about this world.  Or my stride.  The ground is littered with acorns and rotting fruit, the summer’s promise past its prime.  The squirrels scurry for winter, too.

I understand their pursuit.  I am also frantic.  The clock is ticking and I have miles to go.  The metaphor is not lost on me.  An ache really, this feeling of need and time twirling me into captivity.  I am not a willing prisoner. 

Autumn is the procrastinator’s paradise.  The lessons are not subtle here.  The looming skies and swirling leaves demand much of me.  No time to fritter and wonder and wait.  I go all-in and take it to the wall.

I cut the grass today, each stripe a sentinel marking time, each pile of leaves and clippings packed into the bag to await the recycler’s truck.  I throw aside the obstacles in my way.  Three squirt guns lay, still at the ready, in the back yard; a bat and ball are tucked away beneath the swings.  In the corner, a pail and shovel from summer digging, and shells and rocks piled high in some strange Aztec ruin.

Why do I scurry so, trying to pack away the summer and the accouterments and games?  The shadows deepen and my memory clears.  The cold is coming hard and fast; this is what I know.  The animals feel it too.  The squirrels are frenzied and skittish, gathering their winter’s meal.  The acorns fall like bullets on my house and head and car. The sharp cold turns my fingers as white as pall.

But this is the kind of day I was made for:  sucking marrow from the last straws of warmth, breathing deeply as the leaves careen to earth and the acid tang burns my nostrils, joining the critters in my backyard in their race to the great chill that is hurtling towards us.  Our urgency is ripe with truth and hope and longing, as the shadows swallow the deepening light.