This Time of Year

Trees burst with yellow. So, dust to dust. Maine sighs the last taste of summer from her mouth. We bundle ourselves fast beneath our jackets. We steel ourselves against the growing hum of winter weather. Rain threatens ice. We breathe fog into the cold air. I am at peace during this time of year. Loose-fitting sweaters hang placidly from my frame, I can tuck a scarf beneath my chin and press a hat against my head. I am at home underneath big red maple trees. I love the way stories of New England hauntings sound when read aloud from dog-eared thrift store books with bent bindings. I love sweet apple cider. I love when round pumpkins with funny grins begin appearing on old porches. I love chimneys exhaling, their ragged and tired throats expelling pale grey smoke. I love the sound of boots clattering and the sight of children fetching their costumes as they laugh into a night sky.

My voices like it too. Constantly whispering in awe at the beauty, they too steel themselves in anticipation, covering my brain in a soft blanket.

Soon it will be winter.

Winter means depression.  Or worsening depression anyway. But right now, it’s autumn and there are pumpkin pies and ghost stories to be had. A cozy night clasps in her hand's hot chamomile tea.

She says, “Drink up,” and I do. I sleep best this time of year. Buried beneath a mound of comforters, the cool air slows my too-fast heart.

“Slow down,” says the cool autumn air, “slow down. Don’t miss this.”

Someone once said depression is like laying in a cold bath. But it’s more like stepping into a hot shower. Easy to climb into, but much harder to get out of.

Standing at the base of an old maple tree, arms wrapped around her trunk, my fingers cannot reach each other. A great, wide, trunk juts off into the sky. It’s lived three or four times the length of my own life. Each autumn she dies and in the spring she is reborn. When will reincarnation and reality disunite? I feel like I have lived lifetimes in this body.

“Look,” she mutters, her big branches shutter in the cold, “at my resiliency,” her leaves fall and pile at my feet, “I can show you how to be this way.”

Autumn is, after all, a practice in the acceptance of our shortcomings.

“We all need time,” she whispers into the breeze, “to rest.”

All the pumpkins smile. A black cat, who is not mine, yawns on my porch and stretches to life. A big tom cat, who knows it too. He lets out a silly noise from between his teeth. Cats rest when they need it, which is often enough. The tomcat naps in the apricot autumn sunshine.

“Winter is for resting,” says nighttime, her body stretched across the sky.

“And in the spring,” the cat purrs, “we will stretch to life again.”

The cool air captivates me.

“Winter is okay,” I say.

The cat agrees, lazy voice full of sleep, “Don’t fear time for recuperation.”

“We couldn’t go on so long without it,” the trees say, their voices like the wind. Talking all at once.

Bittersweet and rose and wine. Cherries and chestnuts. The colors this time of year are without names. Wordless colors tossed across treetops and across mountains which will soon be powdered in light, quiet snow. And against the blue-sky birds fly south, squirrels gather acorns, and the resident porcupine steals corn cobs from the aged cornfields. Cobwebs gather and the furnace kicks on. Each morning grows colder. Hot soups in hot steamy kitchens are stirred. Ghosts come out at night and stand around their ghostly fires that burn the color of nothingness.

Everything is still except a loan buck that stands at the edge of the woods, hooves stamping in the dirt. Antlers like strong arms grow stronger with each exercise. He grunts and twists his head to look into the forest. A great silence beats within it. Suddenly he turns and runs against the winter wind. Dark eyes like two black marbles inside his head.

The trees shudder. The pumpkins grin. The cat is lazy and warm. Nighttime with her heavy arms comes earlier now. And against the dark a deer races. Heart pounding beneath his chest muscle. His bovine skeleton will come apart and vanish into the soil before spring.

“Rest,” says the cat, “you’re tired.”

I try to sleep. I'm always trying to sleep. I feel like I have become an impression of a ghost. Sheet thin and thinking about tombstones. One second, I am the great hibernationist. The next a hummingbird, with two heartbeats and a mouth full of language.

The deer races.

The deer races.

Behind him, the forest turns pale and blushes at her naked body. Fall is her favorite season to be naked. Autumn reassures us that spring will come. After all, you cannot have life without death. You were meant to heal; you are not a haunted house.