STILL NOTICING Larch Season

All the goldenrod standing dry and slanting to the southeast but still reaching toward the sky, still longing to be torches.

Fleets of larch more orange than pumpkins, more orange than school buses, sharper than arrow points, protecting the water around their feet. Such is their public service. They get no love from tourists but they don’t care. Their unsung beauty is the dessert course for the locals.

Evening primrose growing out of the firepit like an aggressive beanstalk. 

Unthreading gossamer traveler milkweed floss from the horses’ eyelashes and wiping it onto the still green grass. 

Shadows untouched by the sun made black and white negative of fence posts by the first frosts of the season. 

Cowlicks of lush grasses swirl together obscenely, flaunting their tenderness to the deer who can’t eat it fast enough. 

Dogs bark all night at the royal processions of the apple marauders who show up starting around 11 p.m. All that carbohydrate sugar energy can’t go to waste if their highness’ want to live through the winter. 

The temperatures in the daytime hover at 50 degrees Fahrenheit which feels as luxurious as a whirlpool. The smells are sharper and have a concentrated woody oiliness to them. 

In these last days before winter you can almost hear the desperation of the hyper photosynthesis. It sounds like wood splitting. Like the ice cracking in spring.

I can’t get enough of this, just like the deer.