It’s not typical for cold to come so soon and stay.
Nor typical, so much wet for so long.
Surely Summer would have rained itself out by now.
Yet, through Autumn, threatening into Winter, wet.
Still nice to see familiar pastel Winter shades.
Even if sooner than expected.
Even if wetter than usual.
An early appointment the day of the storm had me awake closer to daybreak than usual.
As I walked across the living room, I noticed that the leaves of the houseplant, that “found it’s window” several years ago were trembling.
Even though they calmed to stillness when I stopped walking, I kept looking at the leaves.
I perceived that I saw them start to move again, growing, turning, yearning for pale dawn light.
Movement in the yard drew my eyes through the window, beyond the plant.
There, a sentinel doe draws attention from her young buck as they breakfast. His rack raw and white, velvet recently scraped, now ready for rut, ready for winter.
This birch, too close to neighbor hemlock, grows leaning, finds sun where it can. This wet pale October shows little more color than this birch scar.
Maple splashes yellow here and faraway there. Squalls alternate sun, blue and wet across the sky. Playful youngsters now, they’ll mature as real cold sets, getting running starts from west of Erie.
Almost snow today, cold to soon come. Any last colors will present, dry and fall as seasons deepen.
While enjoying the temperature and clarity of a fine October morning, the distinctive honking of geese punctuated an otherwise calm mist rising from the valley.
After what seemed like minutes, the gaggle revealed itself. Flying at a considerable altitude, these birds were not commuting across the neighborhood; they were on their way with intent.
From the back of the yard, a doe snorts, flashes buff from the tall grass, comes to attention, ears poised, eyes intent, gauging me as friend or threat.
The shadow crossing the sun and yard pulls my eyes up as a tree top turkey vulture pulses wings toward unobstructed sky.
Colors seep slowly stronger, gilding leaves and hills, on this fine October morning.
Yesterday, a brilliant cardinal came to, and knocked on the living room’s north window.
Given it’s persistence on wanting entry to the house, I wondered if the bird was someone I knew or had met before.
A bud vase filled with feathers found, hawk, turkey, and others, decorates the view from one of the living room’s east windows.
Drawn there today, the cardinal perched, then knocked again before taking to wing.
This pair has been habiting a Lyon street pond where, spring has recently revealed, beavers have rebuilt their den.
Dusk muted sunlight highlighted ripples as they regarded their reflections. Upon what they pondered, who knows.
Earlier, they had made their way with surprising urgency, swimming to where so fast, and why, only they knew.
It’s a pond. A very small pond.
Autumn’s rays, cast from shallow, near-winter directions,
illuminate unexpected places;
wisps of retiring meadow echoed in crisp cirrus sky.
Even more so than usual, any gaze cast on the neighborhood illuminates beauty.
Far across the valley, buds, impatient to leaf, nearly glow white, yellow, gold, rust, and every shade of green.
Light green conifer tips shed brown husks that had jacketed them since late Autumn.
Now pollen clouds puff from limbs like powder, like snow did this Winter when wind first picked up ending a snowfalls calm.
Nearby flowerbeds promise Peonies, explode with Periwinkle, begging the question “to where is venomous Myrtle running?”.
In between near and far, Lilacs range every purple shade of which they are capable.
Long shadows from the evening sun cast across a recently mowed field this week.
Drumming of rain pushed most welcomed cool breezes through the bedroom window last evening.
Heat wave broke; still days of summer left!
Drawn out through the woods
to the meadow, the ridgeline,
to where the world simplifies to sepia,
by season’s first snow; a dog snow.
Dog bear bell tinkles; skis swish.
Gaze softens, cold air braces lungs.
A mundane moment, imprinted countless times,
Provokes bliss, gratitude; still sacred now.