Autumn Comes

Songs of Northern Wisconsin Early Autumn 

It's that time now. 

The last guests of the cabin season are gone.

Softly the yellow leaves fall now, caught up in the chicory flowers and the last of the wild Indian Paintbrush flowers.

A lone morning glory bloom hangs from the window box facing the sun 

for all the world reflecting the color of a cobalt sky, leaf shadows snaking across the furred surface.  

Chipmunks, their cheeks bulging hugely, run almost frantically among the children's hills in the sand box, 

through the children's tunnels now softened and rounded with the wind and rain over the weeks.  

The sand toys beneath the cabin window are gone now...safely stored for another season, 

leaving a tractor tire print or a shovel hole eroding slowing away. 

The pale cobalt lake is a mirror to the cloudless sky this noon...absolute stillness is almost loud.

The loons have gone...a lone blue jay occupies the bird feeder this morning.  

Nuthatch and chickadee come and go in late afternoons while we work on the jig saw puzzle on the porch.  

Now and then a brown and gold needle from a pine tree drops 

or an acorn free falls from the heights of the oaks and makes a ping sound against a metal lawn chair or roof.  

The light falls at a new angle on the lake now...making shimmers and reflecting tinges of bright scarlet-lake and burnt-sienna on the water.

Suddenly one craves soup and pumpkin bread and baked squash.

I defrost the refrigerator in the garage where we kept the watermelon and corn of summer and

hang the sheets out on the line once more to dry in  the autumn sun.

We drink our coffee in the sunshine out in the adirondack chairs in the mornings with flannel shirts cozy on our arms.

Time to take long breaths and hear again the summer laughter and shouting, 

smelling again the suntan oil smokey campfires, tasting again the chocolate chip pancakes and cherry cobbler, 

watching the spray of the tube behind the motor boat and 

feeling the bark of the old tree against my back as I sketched out on the Island after lunch.

The last two weeks of cabin time are the transition time..blessed, sad, happy, and amazing as always.

Ginny