How Mild Fall Is

How mild the fall is? I followed a track between tall, pale green cactuses, in this harsh landscape where even the smallest plant has thorns, where bark and leaves, of even regular trees, like carob and olive, are tough and will not softens to human touch. Yet this is a landscape that once was tilled and now abandoned, does this landscape’s common soul feels rancorous of being left to fend for itself? I found a ruin. More than a ruin, a pile of stones only its outline told me that once this had been a home where children had been born, lived and died for generations, till someone said: enough! And left for pastures green, (most likely USA or Canada,) poverty is only romantic in movies. Half of November gone, I’m walking about in shirt sleeves the ground is rock hard and dusty, the local paper tells us that 14 years ago the weather was mild too till January, then it snowed and it was cold till May. Feel I’m being watched in the bushes I see a boar watching me it is a wily old boar it sees I carry no gun, yet keeps its distance; and high above me circles eagles; the landscape is teaming with rabbits which used to be food for the people, who lived in the ruin (when they could snare one) now business men, who have paid for a license to kill, come here to unwind. To kill seems to satisfy a base desire in mankind; yet, it is better a rabbit is scarified, then to see a dead Afghan child with eyes that reflect the grey mountains, poppy fields and the blue unfeeling sky.