I never expect her.
Yet, on time.
She arrives at my doorstep.
DING-donnngg!
She presses the doorbell and flees.
She does this every year.
She rouses me with a hushed puff of temperate air, cruelly announcing with knowledge that I should have but still manage to forget:
Summer’s end is near!
Another quarter on the calendar’s readying its flip.
Another passage.
Another year’s end hidden just around the bend.
Gotcha!
Did I savor her sweetness? Did I even notice her presence? Why did she come and go so quickly? Her visits shorten year by year. She marks time. She mocks my age. She’s not my favorite. She knows this. Still I cannot ignore her presence. Her significance of season and march of time.
Her annual evening arrival lowers the thermostat. She lowers the volume and replaces hot frenzy with the return of the Katydid chorus—beckoning the back porch door to stretch open in a wide yawn.
Seductively
she lingers into morning.
And then.
Gotcha!
The tenor of sun rises. Still too warm
yet loosening its grip.
Parched, variegated ochre-brown leaves, one side bulging barren veins; the opposite deep, precisely carved—
shriveled scalloped patterns on the condo’s back drive.
They tease my eye but refuse satisfying capture by my two-bit iPhone camera.
An awaited, elusive lover.
Bittersweet.
She’s arrived again.
But not for long.
Photo: Harpeth River Greenway, 2015, iPhone 6, initially posted here in another post about his gotcha! time of year.
