“To me, this will always be “Wedding Dress Falls”, but if any consummation has occurred here, it has been between the invisible. The mysticism of November crouches, its damp hold powering what’s still vibrant & green in the moist dells, down where surface ice stiffens in darkness, and melts by the following noon. Today, the crows that normally announce me to myself, are silent. This time of year, each species must take care of its own. Standing for ten minutes in the garage, as a moody shower pelts tools and vehicles convincingly, I question my decision, to drive over the mountain, & take up my work one more day, before the snow. How is it, that these are the very best times? I don’t even resent being left to fend for myself, stirred by nothing but leaf skitter across a gravel driveway, abandoned by its summer people. I like to hold up the rear. The air compressor needed to blow up a tire on the four-wheeler, huddled next to my Chevy’s generous cigarette lighter plug, is something akin to joy. And then the shifter, still offering choice, suggesting traction is a thing to be reveled in. In the wet conditions, not yet quite dry, I think twice about the pitches and slopes of the yard, and the trunk lumps under the massive pine, the segregations of leaf litter left by the mowers. I want to be safe, and yet drive in such a way, that the exhilaration of a dying autumn may securely express it’s incredible last blast. You know, the temptations of life. How much living to push, like a dollar across the bar, just to get the next drink. It’s been brutal, the forced abandonment, of settled, once sanctified, terrain. A marriage mangled by out-sized responses, magnified by misunderstanding, egged on by self interested parties. Where two came together, but only one promised honesty, while the other deflected. Such are promises, and the capricious play of, what, karma? Something I feel enthusiasm, not anger, towards these inevitable betrayals. If you can be blind-sided, and derailed, and still, you did not die, as the clumps of primrose can attest to, then, power be with you. I dug hard with my shovel, into daylily too close to a wall, though the chill was not pleasant, still I felt compelled to clear up a problem I’d neglected, not to carry it into 2022. Why would we want to carry any of this into 2022? Stand up for yourself, like the stolid stands of vital root systems, I can sever at the tops, to tuck them in lower to the ground, for sub-zero life. You are strong, such an un-adulterated biology, that hums in fucking sync with the universe, if you let it. I take sun, where I can, before noon, on the east side, then the south. I position my life, to move beautifully, into the dance of cold, and storage. What I’ve gathered, will tide me over & thru any “nuclear winter” set to come on the unholy wings. Which maybe is overdue, to the extent that we have lived in the bubble, that won’t do, now. Grabbing food on the fly, gawking at the wilderness as I crank up the heat, pants wet on the bottom, mitts soaked, heading beyond the lakeside stores almost closed already, nearly deserted, I can rise like a champion, on some huge deprivation of privilege now. Thrown out, rejected, neglected, looked down at, scorned and scoffed at, is just one way to make it, and be certain of your love.”
