
The Fear Before the Fall

#passion #poetry #art #my words #soapbox


Tall, slender, leafy green rods
Shower out their brilliant yellows
Marking the crest of summers glory
Harbinger to the falling leaf
The rain came down
Torrent
Rivulets off metal and shingled roofing
Cascading
Turbulent
Over every surface
A glass sheen
Thick an sinewous
Elastic
Everything within it’s grasp
Lay frozen beneath a mirrored plane
Separated from air
Unable to gasp
Drowning
Sealed by the thickness of a thought
It wasn’t that long ago for me
I still remember
Summer fields fresh plowed
Planted with seed
Green tips slipping upwards
Little fingers grasping for sun
Watchful of the blackbirds
Grey-brown grasshoppers slowly grazing
Very much like an errant cow
Turned into the wrong field
Yes
I remember tripping over the tilled furrow
Clumsily wandering about my chores
Daydreaming about some other life
The future
Now here I am
Oddly wandering in my golden years
Picking through each furrow of my mind
One moment I am the locust
Next the slow grazing cow
Searching out each savory grain
Every tender green wisp
Until reality wakens me
And the startled crow
Nimble and quick
Takes flight
Gleaning away another memory
Forgotten
Distant hills and ridge lines fade into the hazy grey of hot humidity
White clover edges out the crimson in their number
The yellow-black stripping of the bees competes quietly with the hummingbird for nectar
Lost among the slender tubes of honeysuckle and trumpeter vine
I find myself content to watch the pale lime green of buds transform from winters brown nodules into verdant colors of hand sized leaf
Even the constant change of sky
First downcast in early morning fog
Then radiant golden as sun blazes through
Only to once again darken by the approach of rain
These bring me happiness
All the while measuring the width and height of the labor to come
Watching a young black snake slow gliding across leaf and rock.
She stands out against the brown and yellows of coming fall.
Silent and quick, and as long as a kitchen broom. Coiling up and then straightening out she threads her way along.
I often loose sight of her amongst the fennel an goldenrod. It’s only after a mad dash and leap of a surprised frog that I find her again.
The soft shimmer of black scale gliding along betwixt and between the plants helps idle the last of summer away…

My mind wanders back to the day I sat watching the slow drifting mirages dance across the hot valley floor. Almost as a dream a desert goat appears munching on dry twigs and leaves. I silently watch as she moves on. Just like the petroglyph that lies close beside me of a goat and the blazing sun. Time immortal, I understand what life is about.
The soft muzzled cough brought Alice back from being lost in her usual daydreams.
It had been months since she had walked freely about the streets. Even longer since the blind run through the dark forests of another world.
If this insane self-imposed quarantine had to continue for very much longer, Alice was going to leap back through into the brightly lit hall beyond. Once there she was more than willing to try her luck at some other random doorway.
“What then?” muttered the low voice of the sage.
Alice could tell he was talking more to himself than to her.
Alice replied anyway, “Anywhere but here.”
The look of the old mages floor length beard partially muzzled by a soft swath of mask looked ridiculous. The rope ties for the ears could not reach so Alice had helped him braid the ends into the facial hair just beneath the cheeks.
The effect gave the ancient librarian a hipster grunge look.
The ink stained hands of the sage had been hard at work rubbing his face again. Either an allergy from the ink that now tinted his nose or from the dreaded Covid virus had been making the elderly gentleman wheeze and cough. He had coughed enough times that Alice had demanded the face covering.
The sage grumpily complied just to silence her complaining.
The whole request struck him funny since it came from a woman wearing no clothes at all…
The doorman had been busy hanging invisible signs about the hall. Each had been hung so that an individual entering could see them with little effort. He was certain when the complaint department was called he would be found blameless in the spread of such ignorance. Each entry had been clearly marked with a request for a mandatory fourteen day quarantine, and each infectious destination properly marked.
The Gatekeeper had even replaced his usual Welcome mat with one that read, “Masks Required”.
“Yes”, he thought, “in a reality of inexistence the flattened curve wasn’t going to catch him in another surge, hoax or not.”
Pat sat watching the falling leaves. The peace autumn brought was a welcome change from the dry hot days of summer. Still the thought to lay naked in those golden rays made his pulse quicken with youthful memories.
“The seasons change with the turn of a word,” he whispered to the quiet room. Though there was a large crowd, no one heard him.
Pat was aware that the sentence could be thought of as political, as well as environmental.
Opinions were changing. Impatient populations desperate for a miracle.
Come November another four years of greatness would be chosen. Hopefully one that meant the destruction of a party founded in racism. If not then things weren’t going to look too good for the home front.
It had been bad enough that this man-made virus was unleashed by corrupt policies of the criminal elite in the attempt of a one-world-order coup.
To have to suffer under the heavy-handed tactics of the cosmopolitan could lead to an actual armageddon between good and evil…
Pat watched the falling leaves. The beauty was not wasted on him. The mix of yellows and reds drifting down. Sometimes in soft spirals, sometimes in a direct glide. Individual leaves and groups all randomly blowing about with a kaleidoscope of color.
None of the meaning was missed.
Everything had a purpose;
Pat just had his own preference in how things should end.
All this change from the green leaves of one tree. Nothing was ever missed…
She said she hears the night birds call
But when I listened I could not hear them
It was during the last breath of summer
Blowing the first leaves of fall
Tired eyes were looking to the west
Into the setting of the sun
Where withered limbs bare of fruit
Sway in a dry September wind
Forgetful of the spring
Naked she sings in the moonlight
She dances beneath the stars
Even as my heart yearns
Desperate to hear her song
The echo of the night birds
Calling from afar
The sun is setting
Life flows on