This is 'that' day
This is that day, the one you know is coming for weeks, the one when you know it’s over. You are on your road thinking about the day when you realize: the color is gone.
This is that day, when the branches are naked, and the trees are as if suddenly upside down, their roots reaching to the sky.
This is that day, when you realize the golden hot orange red yellow of autumn has passed. The next rains will dampen that wonderful and oh-so-transient noise of newly-fallen leaves, the din that arises with a musty waft when you scuff through them. Soon, their last remnants of color will drain away. Soon, they will be unremarkably bland, dampened, rubbery.
This is that day: first frost. First honest-to-goodness frost.
This is that day, when the light can once again filter through places blocked in the fullness of summer by the leaves on the trees, when you can see the horizon through the forest, when dawn has a wider beam.
This is that day, when it’s time to really pay attention to those outdoor chores — the hoses, the flowerbeds, the driveway plowman’s markers — or it Will. Be. Too. Late.
This is that day, when soup recipes come to mind, and the anticipation of the cheery yellow dance of flames in the wood stove.
This is that day when the couch reasserts itself over the patio furniture, with the happy premise that you can burrow under the throw-quilt with a good book and hot cocoa (or maybe a hot buttered rum) and peaceful music.
This is that day when the change of season is irrefutable, inevitable, indescribable. Which is just fine with me.
