The sounds of sunshine and baseball on the radio give way to soft winds luring leaves toward the ground; forcing trees to undress too swiftly as though the largest longest party had ended maybe an hour before, and they just arrived home, exhausted. If you stare at a sunset for too long you go blind. I think that is how that saying goes. Either way eventually they all look the same, the sunsets do, so what is the point? Too much of a good thing makes that thing not so good anymore. The colors of leaves in late October Never seem boring even if the colors are always the same (even if the timing is not). Change permeates the air. It becomes necessary for everything to ultimately stay the same. After the fall, winter arrives, followed by all the others. The days are numbered One, Two, Three…. followed by all the others. Sometimes, there is one extra. I cannot fathom where the sun finds the time.
summer
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Among the skinny trees one stands out for no reason whatsoever. Neither as wide nor as tall as its siblings and mates, it extends from the picturesque forest floor, sprints toward an azure sky, stopping just short. One of the last winds of Autumn (is this the last wind of Autumn?) swirls about reluctant to put itself to bed; working to outlast the season like children on bicycles in middle September at dusk as the sun sets a bit earlier. If the sun even sets at all.
Arbitrary Summer Minutes
On that summer day we experienced all the four seasons, but never at once. This tends to happen in Northeast Ohio. In a different summer, our porch was painted a sort of light blue; A shade of blue the sky can assume upon the perfect alignment of all universal force imaginable. Yet, in some places that paint began to fade; it peeled in others. Four of us sat: One on the swing attached by chains to the ceiling, Another on the Adirondack chair back in the corner. Two more on marble slabs, forming corners of the rectangle. Wrought iron railings, painted black, so smooth they coulda been God himself, The Devil, maybe even Death, that most rogue agent. The approaching storm gathered quickly from afar. Electric space, all around us, closed in upon our tranquility. Then a flash, contact too close for our comfort… Simultaneously we became surprised, inched ourselves backward away from the storm greeting us at our literal doorstep, each of us doing so without knowing the others would too. So it rains, there's wind, thunder and lightning; we sit and watch, hopeful for total obliteration. Of course, it never happens. Silently fallen twigs down the (gratefully) we race newly formed rapids that collected in our street's storm alley.
