The Fall Creep Is On

Monday morning, the screen door on the back porch opened with a soft scritch to thick, moist air; the wooden back steps were black and lustrous with moisture; the whole back yard was dripping. Not quite rain, but mist, mist so thick there wasn't much difference.The dropped shoulders of the world.

Tuesday, actual rain. Enough to speckle the windshield, then spread out in feathers along the side-windows as  I raced up the boulevard, anxious to get to campus in time to make copies before my first class starts.  Enough to know that the lounge cushions would be soaked and there was nothing much to be done about it - I would have to rely on the afternoon's heat to cook them out. 

On my way out to the second campus in Napa later that afternoon, small children dwarfed by back packs, thick with no longer needed jackets and sweaters from morning, walked away from the elementary school in threes and fours. Driving home from my evening class, a spectral silver glow fanned along a ridge line: night work in the vineyards. And then rounding a corner, I was startled by workers near the road, backlit by this same halogen-glow coming from three pairs of lights stacked high, ladder-like, on the front end of a yellow four-wheeled tractor, resembling nothing so much as a mechanical, headless, yet six-eyed, centaur.  

One small sprig of red leaves amongst the vines as I drove by, lickety-clip.

And this morning, on a walk around Shollenberger Park, the muted fragrance of alkaline dust and brittle oat grass. The marsh is completely dry, the bottom cracked and white; the grasses whorled and matted, cowlicks on some tawny-beast's hide. The touch of rain from the beginning of the week, the dripping morning fog has done little but freshen up the creeping bushes. The little sparrows hop about, busy with seeds and insects but most likely no longer under the non-stop grind of feeding nestlings. This is the small trough between seasons; the full melancholy of fall has not descended, but the onerous demands, the tenacious grip of summer is lessening.  

School has started but the big papers have not been assigned. 

We all breathe deep, grateful for space.