Springing into Fall

The sky is singing blue happy.  I was out there for a while and could not possibly take in enough of it, all of the autumn crunch in the grass laughing.  It is this change after a long low howling summer that makes me sit up and blink.  Yes, it's good.  Yes, it is the 180-degree turn back toward spring in the distance, boomeranging us soon enough through winter.  

The summer was a dog all right, lying there all twitchy and dreaming, not moving much except in my imagination.

How else can you tell you're alive if you don't notice the air outside or the dirt under your feet when you walk?  Stand on a hill away from town (if you have a hill somewhere to go to) and yell as loudly as you can.  Take a deep breath and just HEY! really hard and listen.  Not only does your heart beat harder but you hear evidence of life:  A shout in return. 

Birds do it in the morning:  It's very quiet in the predawn gray light (if you're lucky).  Then, randomly, a little bird ventures a chirp, a cheep, a twitter, tentatively.  A pause.  Another in some other tree or bush responds.  He senses it was another, not himself, who chirped first.   A few others join in and all those little ones with tiny hearts beating at some ridiculously fast rate as they sit still (even before the first cup of coffee), all shriek in their way.  Light! It's light again!  Every and all little life-lets with feathers are run through with the energy of the new light dawning. 

Then, after all of them sing their twittering arias, peace reigns, coffee is poured and a sigh exhaled.  Damn! that was good.

Why does that first bird sing?  It's a good question.  He's got something worth saying:  God zapped his little shorts and he's telling us about it in no uncertain terms.  He made it, did not become a midnight snack for a cat.  He made it.  He MADE it!  He's alive!  Same reason to go yell HEY on a hilltop next time you're up there.  You're alive, life is in you and you've got something that must absolutely come out - loudly. 

Too still outside to fly a kite on shore, it would be good to be out on the bay in a boat, rushing over the water, aware that onshore in the distance autumn is settling on the trees like fine dust on a curtain.  You can see a million miles across the bay today and imagine  the Pleiades dancing around the moon.  The sky is singing blue happy.  Isn't it odd how Fall feels like Spring sometimes?