Season's End

Late at the fair, I see Montana-like skies. I see things that happen in nature during the ordinary course of a humanless day. I can look at them like I am not there. Watching, I feel I have all the time I need.

Autumn rides in on wet, turbulent air. I hear it breaking around the walls of the building, pressing against the old barn-sash windows upstairs. I like the feeling of defending myself and the cats against the night cold. For a little while, anyway.

Possum works so hard to comprehend space heaters. Me and the cats, we live down here for months, always ending the season in a solitude so deep, it's as if our lives are bi-coastal, like there's an ocean of awayness between us and home. Yet sometimes I don't want to go back there, to the dirt of the city, the garage break-ins and 4 o'clock sirens.

They love it here too. How could they not? So much to see and hear and smell, so many ways to wear themselves out.

I've been doing this for eleven years and it's still hard to make the transition, no matter how I try to plan for it, no matter that, like the cats, within minutes I'll be happy to be back with H.G. in our winter's home. Here to there always seems too far, so I end up taking a bridge instead of the highway.

She lives right between my two homes, balanced perfectly between my hibernating and my living. They are such different lives, but they share her, they need her.