October: A Snapshot

The perpetual sunset light, and the dandelions floating like marine snow, down the road, across the field, going places I'm not. 

A gradient of greens and golds and Earth tones, nature's last bounty smeared across the landscape like an artist's wayward stroke. 

Trees late turning, and the end of the world, isolation, and the putrid stench of burnt coffee slowly going cold. 

Too bright afternoons and late October, too-ripe wheat swaying in the too-warm breeze chasing the dandelion wishes away, and up, and towards greater things. 

And, of course, the state of eternity that exists there, there at the end of the world where time passes to a different beat, slow and languid, liquid and honey-golden as it swirls around us. 

(And I feel like dancing, like running, like jumping and riding and seizing the breeze while it's still here, while we're still young, while I'm still feeling too-alive and so-beautiful and all-right. But I don't dance; not anymore.) 

And that's the way I think, sometimes, little stunted phrases that need to be written down lest I forget the golden lap of soft-sweet, wine-like sunlight caressing me through the open window. 

(Spinning. Knee-high grass and a glowing smile, and the three o'clock sunlight streaming in her golden hair. Dancing. The white room. Snap-shot dream-mirages of a life that was never mine.) 

Jack-o-Lantern's glowing eyes and the sharp, pungent scent of ash (and fire, and burning, and the lakes of sulfur down where no one dares wander, and Paradise Lost) stray dogs running on their hammer-wheel paths like they don't realize there's anything but the road, sprinting along because they don't see that there's a way out. 

Rumbling motorcycles and squeaky-tired SUV's and dirt bikes throwing up gravel and eating up tar like doing 90 on I80. The long (straight and narrow), steady, empty road, and a forest of floating wishes. 

And me, watching it all like it's the most beautiful place I've ever seen.