Back to Autumn

 I have had enough of snow, of this monochrome world. I'm going back to autumn, November 11, to be exact, when most trees were bare but the sun coughed, rose briefly in its deathbed and gave up one last fervent seventy-degree day. On a weekend, no less. Ahhh. Let's go, kids.

Let's go to Dean's Fork and ride our bikes over the ruts and puddles and through the crackly leaves.

 Let's admire the old house that's leaning into the hill, the house that became a barn that became a corral

and now is home to nothing but mice and phoebes and snakes.

Let's marvel at the cerulean sky and what's left of the fiery leaves. Park our bikes and walk awhile.

Let's look at the light of this hour.

We'll sit in the road that nobody much uses and compose. We'll make poems and pictures with scattered light, sticks and trails through the leaves.

We'll compose pictures around a giant foreground dog.

Who suddenly sits to scratch his eye with a deft toenail. Kuff kuff kuff kuff kuff. How does he do it?

You'll walk in and out of the pictures, not guessing your bear-brown outfit is perfect for the setting.

And you'll sit and breathe and soak up the last of the November sun. Your sunglasses, simply criminal, for they hide your ice-gray eyes.

But you like them, and I can't tell you anything any more.

You, young boy, will run to find a stick to tempt your doggie;

hold it above his head in the universal invitation to play.

You'll whirl and laugh and he will, too.

Until the swift chop when he takes it and breaks it.

Then asks for another. He promises not to break this one but you know he lies.

A day so perfect, we must go back

Sharing the light, the log, the dog, the sun and the Snap Pea Crisps

and a happiness so simple and pure that it might flit right by unappreciated, like a small yellow butterfly

on the last warm day in November


Unless we noticed.

Happy New Year. Resolution: To make my own weather in 2011.