End of season

Nov. 22, 1980

Five days until Thanksgiving and the loudest sound here comes from the falls, inflated by recent heavy rain so that it seems to sing of spring just as winter threatens us.

All other sound seems muffled, even the persistent and annoying flow of traffic down River Drive.

The wind alone seems unbridled, whispering in my ears with its chill voice as it pushes old cardboard boxes along the roadside, boxes that catch on the trunks of trees or exposed weeds for a moment and then move on.

The wind catches the feather duster willows, rattling their already yellowed leaves, casting many into the slow flow of water at my feet, unaffected n this eddy by the foam flowing down from the falls.

Frost dots the river banks and creeps out across slow water like the edges of some child’s coloring book filled in first at the edges before the serious freeze starts.

Most things here have already surrendered to the inevitable, closing up or burying deep for when the snow and ice seals up this world. The falls are always last to accept fate, and slow on even after all else has succumbed, its gurgling voice smothered with ice before it concedes

I feel at loss this time of year, aching for signs of life among the dead and dying, for some omen that life will reappear later when all the dying is done, knowing down deep this world will seem different, stranger as a result, suspecting that the me that sees that rebirth will be different and stranger, too – and I am as reluctant as the falls to give in.