Where do the jays hide? The sparrows and robins and mourning doves? Do the wet leaves make cool blankets for the squirrels or merely plaster their furry hides against the backs of chimney posts and abandoned eaves? Does the chipmunk roll into a striped ball, napping...dreams of deep winter slumber around the edges of the dripping nest?
My kayak's orange hull peeks from under the blue cover, drinking in the only water it has encountered this fall. Around it, like flattened children, the orange leaves skim the ground, easily as slick. "Before November, Before November!" I send mindwaves to the dry-docked boat. I mean it. The lake has filled my consciousness each morning--only to be pushed away by cries of students or parents or the ping of rain.
Upstairs in the haunted attic recesses, the rain swells the wood another season. I know there are splintered holes that will need repair. But not before the passing of the parents. Not before my own decisions about New England promises and four seasoned future. A brown-tinted ripple the size of a penny has decorated the ceiling since I arrived. It doesn't grow, but is constant. A shadow of what is to come. A reminder of pebbles carelessly flung into ponds, sending out secrets to the farthest shore.
Does my heart still hold any secrets?
The light splashes against the garage; the roof; the windows of my neighborhood. Clouds drop down upon our heads.(Blessings in a country of thirst, as we have become.) The summer's long past. Autumn rages, just outside. The back yard smells like New England cemeteries-- dank moisture rising from the lawn; the soil singing a final chorus, before the deafening frost.
This is what I remember. This is what I've come home to.
This is my inheritence and my legacy, so far from the Pacific shore.
My kayak's orange hull peeks from under the blue cover, drinking in the only water it has encountered this fall. Around it, like flattened children, the orange leaves skim the ground, easily as slick. "Before November, Before November!" I send mindwaves to the dry-docked boat. I mean it. The lake has filled my consciousness each morning--only to be pushed away by cries of students or parents or the ping of rain.
Upstairs in the haunted attic recesses, the rain swells the wood another season. I know there are splintered holes that will need repair. But not before the passing of the parents. Not before my own decisions about New England promises and four seasoned future. A brown-tinted ripple the size of a penny has decorated the ceiling since I arrived. It doesn't grow, but is constant. A shadow of what is to come. A reminder of pebbles carelessly flung into ponds, sending out secrets to the farthest shore.
Does my heart still hold any secrets?
The light splashes against the garage; the roof; the windows of my neighborhood. Clouds drop down upon our heads.(Blessings in a country of thirst, as we have become.) The summer's long past. Autumn rages, just outside. The back yard smells like New England cemeteries-- dank moisture rising from the lawn; the soil singing a final chorus, before the deafening frost.
This is what I remember. This is what I've come home to.
This is my inheritence and my legacy, so far from the Pacific shore.
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