Late September
It feels like late September today. I’m forever making statements like this. New friends are intrigued by this at first. Old friends are baffled.
Why, Josh?
It seems like there’s Deja vu lurking anytime I look. So I’ve taken to noticing, and if I mix that with half a pinch of well, because, and swirl in some obscure botanical observations, I’ve baked a cake that’ll confuse even the most forgiving of listener (or reader).
Hey, Robert Frost did it and he’s worshipped.
Hold my root beer, buddy.
I repeat: It feels like late September today.
A rare gray day waited for me this morning. A cloud got stuck on the mountain. It tried to move, but caught on the radio tower, tearing without a sound, and healing as only a cloud can.
It’s still there, or maybe a replacement cloud, working the mid-morning shift. They should pride themselves on anonymity and uniformity, clever as it is. The bullfrogs dot the pond, so low their noses stick out. The grass is over summer, no doubt about that. Even the bugs seem a little jaded, singing with the sound of musicians returning from the second set at a bar gig.
I sounded like that once, my feet sticking to the tiles at the front of the barroom, walking across the “stage”, easing into the chords to take us to Alabama. Skynyrd is every working musician’s kin, and they must be visited. (Just don’t watch the ladies dancing off beat. The beer always affects them, and they’ll confuse even James Brown’s drummer.)
A tractor eased down the street, the county mowing the shoulder. There’s a hint of an idea of rain, or maybe it’s wistfulness that shows up in the quiet, steady air of late September and the crickets ask what could have been.
But it’s not late September.
It’s early July.
What shall we do with it?
-Josh
The Jimsonweed is growing better than the grass, but that’s how things usually work.