Fall

A guitar strums simply somewhere out of sight,

Down in the valley this October.

We lie still atop the golden hill we’ve climbed, Jill and I,

To fetch a pail of water,

Looking down at the town below,

Only God watching us,

Looking down on us in turn.

The air is so full and crisp that you just know

That if you stuck your sweatered arms out to your sides and spun around,

You might just lift a few feet off the grass

Like a whirligig,

Then float gently back down, crisp and dried and gentle.

The sunshine comes down sideways, backlighting everything:

The purple grapevines, the dusty telephone poles,

The rusty cow-licked hair of children playing ring-around-the-rosies by the river;

Ashes, ashes,

We all fall down!

It's not exactly that there's no wind today, but

A breeze blows in from all sides at once, equally,

And cancels itself out, electricity hung like blankets to dry in the air,

Pine smoke and ashes smearing around seductively like rainbow-colored oil in a puddle.

Come; look with me at this withered, tortured tree,

Leaves the colors of brilliant mud, seemingly frozen in time here

Under cruel Medusa's stare, snakes of autumn for her hair.

Father time kindly glides by as we watch,

And a single leaf falls down, around and around

On its way to the ground and to winter and death and the natural progression of life,

Lazily, beautifully, tragically. Its life is a macrocosm of its death.

As is all of this.

As are we.

Ashes to ashes.

We all fall down.