autumn

autumn again, season of strange breezes that bring with them the promise of frost, of halloween nights, bedecked in makeup and sparkling with shiny moments of drug-fueled dancing, or cider fueled handing out of comic books and toothbrushes, autumn mornings are cold enough for sweaters here and autumn afternoons are warm enough for short sleeves and foraging butterflies.   They are here still, the cabbage whites making the best of catnip and overgrown kale, the forlorn bumblebee workers, born extra small because their queen is on the verge of giving up, their selfish sisters waiting it out in some mouse burrow hive waiting for frost and snow and tulips and finally summer again, their day to shine, and ours to reflect on those cold winter days when the egg of our own future fate could barely be transported in a carseat through the glacial frost, air so thin space come down and crush us under its weightlessness, and two pumpkins grow in the thick of all these promises, heavy and green and lewd in their own strange ways.  Is it time for cider yet?  Property taxes?  New friends at school?  Steamy windows in coffeehouses and over-thumbed paperback books?  Long black coats with pockets full of various useful supplies?  Not yet, but soon, and the axial tilt of the earth will ensure that it keeps happening long after the continent beneath me is worn to a nub.  Somehow, life will survive the mass extinction in front of it, these same ragweeds and earwigs will rise to repopulate the planet, and new creatures will greet the fall.