The late year

I like Rosh Hashonah late, when the leaves are half burnt umber and scarlet, when sunset marks the horizon with slow fire and the black silhouettes of migrating birds perch on the wires davening. I like Rosh Hashonah late when all living are counting their days toward death or sleep or the putting by of what will sustain them— when the cold whose tendrils translucent as a jellyfish and with a hidden sting just brush our faces at twilight. The threat of frost, a premonition a warning, a whisper whose words we cannot yet decipher but will. I repent better in the waning season when the blood runs swiftly and all creatures look keenly about them for quickening danger. Then I study the rockface of my life, its granite pitted and pocked and pickaxed eroded, discolored by sun and wind and rain— my rock emerging from the veil of greenery to be mapped, to be examined, to be judged.