Autumn Depths

They say that middle age is the autumn of our lives. Today I feel it. The sickening frustration with every long held issue. The lack of olfactory stimulus weighs more heavily since I glimpsed that Paris of feeling last weekend on a prednisone high. Of course, the comedown may also be responsible for this sinking into the negative. I could have been dead by now. Or blinded by the sinus surgery. Or addicted to pain pills. Instead I have what I have to carry forward. But today these are burdens, not attributes. Stranger still hot flashes have returned. Oh the adrenal gland, are you the pit of all that makes me. And is that what Autumn is for: appreciating these undertones of life, the long ignored shade cast all around us, when all we have wanted was the sun.

Summer Endings

The heat is gone. The memories drift into that sepia tone that softens every rough spot. The baseball season is winding down. Only one game of that glut of tickets that once sprinkled our calendars with the promise of hot dogs and a chance to raise our voices at the ol' ballgame.

For me it means organizing the scrims and dabblings into something that might resemble a chapter or a story. And wonder which one of these holds the art.

Summer's sweetness waiting to be bottled. And could its music last forever?