Stick Season

It is the month of snapping traps, when mice seeking comfort in the kitchen find instead the jaws of death. When cards fall from their berth in the mirror’s edge, released to flap to the floor, face down greetings of cheer.  Chairs creak and crack in the night, grains of wood winding tight, shrinking joint to joint, sending shots of sound through the darkness.

The conquered heads of summer hang high in the forlorn garden, the sun-bright faces withered, the pregnant seeds thrown and eaten, stalks and sepals pointy and dry. Bears and foxes roam on their final rounds, wide territories to manage, each building an inventory of autumn stores. Raptors ride the ridgelines in a true highway in the sky, the updraft holding for miles of flight without a single flap, sharp bodies turned to the angle for perfect lift, effortless propulsion, keeping the trim tight to take them away from the rising cold and towards warmth. 

The green padding on earth has shrunk and dropped, old lanes through the woods appear, borders and corners of softened stone walls snap into place, and the apples of ancient homestead trees hold tight on the tips of the resolute branch, calling the eye. 

It is the season of sticks, when the palettes of grey and brown make mad love to each other and multiply in a million hues of subtlety.  Tapestries of nuance, textures of broadcloth rolled over the hills, visual fields of monotony cloak the sky and ground. 

It is a willful act to not be repulsed and irritated by the withdrawal of splendor.  It was easy to be cradled by summer, sung to while the insects hummed and flowers unfurled in symphonies of color, buoyed high in a sensual embrace weaving in from the horizon’s rich line. The absence of obvious delight angers our spoiled system.  

The bough has broken its hold, the cradle has tipped, the heads of mice are smashed in the traps, eyes bulging under a grotesque hold.  Abundance has withdrawn and left the cards face down on the floor.  We are knees and elbows on the hard ground, wrapped and bundled against the pinching cold, gasping with rejection while the frost creeps up summer’s old blade, birthing small blooms of ice for the eye able to see.