Walking Through Autumn

September Powerlines along my path bristled with electric fire, scorching the raised brow of September' Just past a green patch of sumac, I found my neighbor Terence, waiting, letting his dog wander the meadow. We spent a few minutes bent over thew meadow flowers looking for the bergamot plant. He straightened first. 'We can't see it, but we know it's here. Even the dog smells it.' 'Yes, ' I said, still searching. 'Smelling it is reward enough, ' and I realized it was time to part. I ambled east, further into the treeless meadow. His gold dog led him west toward a grove of aspen. No doubt he too walked as slowly as this summer was becoming autumn. The scarecrows were all fast asleep. A lone hawk glided far above the birds of passage. I imagined an evening drinking Earl Grey tea, and writing again those long letters I once called 'massive missives' before sleeping as deeply as the scarecrows. October Small groups of Canadian geese, five of them, crossed the cloudy sky. Their honking raised my eyes from earth to heaven, and I stopped raking to watch them disappear into thick clouds, no longer winged things but just dots, like crooked ellipses, sinking into the depths of heavy paper, whatever message they were spelling by their flight, smudged, then erased, lost in whiteness.... November The bronze path through the woods crunches under our shoes. Hard earth holds steady. The delicate higher branches of a leaning aspen map another way out. The air, sliced by flights of bees, bleeds summer warmth over this November day. Ages ago, you stopped counting our steps. We walk. side by side, in an 'andante' rhythm, as if we have nothing else to hope for. The smoky scents of autumn cannot be denied. We breathe them as we climb a steep slope of leafless trees. Breathless at the top, we keep moving, as certain of reaching our true home as the geese winging overhead. December The sunroom is without light. You slouch in a big chair, wrapped in a dark blue blanket. Your brown eyes are the brightest spots to be seen, and the many-colored glow of the television provides the only window into the outside world. It is the middle of the evening... Scraps of paper litter the floor. A few pages float about, refusing to land, unwilling to lie forgotten. In my library, a single bulb illuminates a volume of Goethe. I am turning the pages slowly, and it is enough. Pelleas is already asleep, his head tucked loosely under his cowl. Just beyond this white wall in front of me, clouds fold into each other, and a deluge of snow is poised to fall all winter long.