I've gotten into the habit, barring a torrential rainfall or blizzard of snow, every day to walk around my neighborhood, with an emphasis on the Chelsea Parade (sort of a park, but smaller) at the intersection of my street and Washington Street.
This past Sunday because I was feeling like a rule breaker I walked around Chelsea Parade clock-wise; usually, I walk it in the opposite direction. I told myself I was vacationing in Australia where, I was raised to believe, thanks to the Coriolis effect, water drains in a different direction than it does in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where I grew up.
It doesn't really, as it turns out, but knowing that it doesn't, never stops me from telling myself that it most certainly does. Kind of like how Trump incessantly tells us he won the election except he had fewer popular and electoral votes.
We're five weeks away from the start of winter and until this past Thursday, we'd had a run of wonderful and lovely Septemberish weather that almost (but not quite) led me to believe (hope?) this might be the year that autumn simply melted into spring.
The bare branches throughout the Chelsea Parade are what remains of all the gorgeously hued trees lining the walkway that we had as recently as last weekend as those now fallen leaves of mostly yellow and brown cover the grass and the informal shortcuts across the parade, reminding me that whether or not, we'll have weather or not.
The forsythia bush (more like a tree really) in our side yard near one of our kitchen windows provides refuge and shelter for dozens if not hundreds of sparrows from early spring until a few days ago when the leaves, having turned red, chose to abandon the bush for the soft embrace of the earth below and the birds, who don't seem to migrate for reasons I don't understand, have moved on in search of a more protected place and space to outlast the winter.
The bush looks forlorn without its leaves and forsaken without its occupants. I can almost hear John Martyn, "Bless the weather that brought you to me. Curse the storm that takes you away."
-bill kenny
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