Late Afternoon, Thanksgiving Day

Late Afternoon, Thanksgiving Day

Late afternoon, Thanksgiving Day
5:09 post meridian to be exact
Exactitude unrequired yet oddly noted
Backyard air inert but tangible
Bereft of the just-set sun’s last rays
Yet holding the fading light of dying day
Lambent
Hovering among columns of dark trunks
Trapped under autumn’s lingering canopy
Glowing golds, riotous scarlets, exhausted browns
Still clinging to branch and twig
Waiting to fall and complete the carpet
On the still-verdant lawn
Already lightly covered since the last raking
All motionless in this moment’s preternatural calm
Until
One lone leaf falls
Carried on no current
Tumbling straight down
Like a tattered, dropped tissue
Then stillness again
Not a single leaf aflutter
Anywhere
Even in the upper reaches of the tallest trees
Air so still that it conveys no sound
If there were sound to convey
No breeze-whisper
No muffled bark of the dog two houses down or the one across the street
No sighing hiss of a passing car
Not even the faint laughter of children at play in the cul-de-sac
Absolute still and quiet
Then another leaf drops
Straight down like the first, silently
Yet another thing for which to be thankful
This silence, this stillness
After the familiar, well-loved faces and voices at table
Tables groaning with nature’s bounty
Even those distant brought near
By phone or photo and text
Family even beyond blood, bonds of love
But now, the quiet
Like a held breath
Fragile equipoise
This season of death, nature’s last rattling gasp against the life-sustaining bounty it has provided
Each day shorter than the last
For only four more weeks
Until that longest of nights
Until the sun begins its inevitable, inexorable march back north across the sky
Tracing the ancient analemma
Towards equinox, then solstice
Towards warmth and renewal and rebirth
The old familiar cycle
Its rhythm built into the heavens
Inherent in stalk and trunk, leaf and bough
Buried in sinew and bone
Subliminal
Comforting
Reassuring
Even as a third leaf falls
Straight down
Through still air