Fall is the beginning, where I was born. Along the lakeshore with the rising sun, under the fruit of the apple trees. See the cool breeze brush my skin. Late September. A new member, a new family.
A new school year. An apple for the teacher, carrying a lunch box. New book bag heavy like rocks. Squeaky sneakers, sharp pencils. A fresh slate. Grown now but still in class. Always, forever learning.
Forever yearning. For food, sustenance of all kind. Behind October, bring in the corn crop. Drying, dying, brown and brittle against the blood red sky. Row by row, stalks bow to the combine. Machine's deep rumble tumbles through the air, hits my chest. Corn dust sticks to the Vaseline on my lips. It tastes like a promise.
For nothing is for certain. Not the harvest. Certainly not the hunt. The buck, the king of the forest. Hears the crunch, a slight step. Escapes the arrow. Leaves the hunter lost in the mud. Lost with only the blood on his hands. Maybe he can draw a map. A map to take him home or at least down the road. Loaded down, carrying emptiness. Just like the rest of us. Us lost souls.
Lost my best friend to November. Remember, bright colors fade. Beauty made frail, she fell like leaves to the ground. Swirling around and around and down. Down where we laid her in cold earth, right before the first frost. In bed, I tossed and I tossed. At a loss to leave her there. There and alone. Bone sewn into soil and silt. Tilting my axis, my dreams. My dreams become a stream, lead me astray. Away, anywhere else at all.
Fall is the beginning. Fall is the end. The beginning to the end. Not the end of the rhyme, just the end until next time. A time to take for there is plenty. Plenty and enough.
YOU ARE READING
A Tree Takes Root
Poetrya tree takes root out of the seeds that were sown as deep in the forest a new life is grown
