Fall Festivals

Reminiscing


Cynthia Allen-Linck

10/18/15




How can it be fall already. It is here though with all the familiar sights, smells and flavors I have been looking forward to; burning leaves, candle smoke, and pumpkin spice everything... wide blue skies, cool evenings and falling leaves.

Leaves have been falling for a while, even though there hasn’t been a frost yet. Although, it was 35 degrees on my thermometer a few days ago! The first frost can’t be far away. The garden is being cleared and the plants brought inside. Garden mums provide a last blast of color.

A sure sign of fall is all the animals on the road who couldn’t compete with the cars as they tried to get fattened up before their winter’s nap.

Festivals and Threshing Bees fill the weekends with crafters, artisans, and reenactors providing fun for us in modern times and reminding us of the hard work it was in older times. So many crafts, treats, and antiques - so little time!

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And Now it's October

the golden hour of the clock of the year. Everything that can run

to fruit has already done so: round apples, oval plums, bottom-heavy

pears, black walnuts and hickory nuts annealed in their shells,

the woodchuck with his overcoat of fat. Flowers that were once bright

as a box of crayons are now seed heads and thistle down. All the feathery

grasses shine in the slanted light. It’s time to bring in the lawn chairs

and wind chimes, time to draw the drapes against the wind, time to hunker

down. Summer’s fruits are preserved in syrup, but nothing can stopper time.

No way to seal it in wax or amber; it slides though our hands like a rope

of silk. At night, the moon’s restless searchlight sweeps across the sky.

"And Now it's October" by Barbara Crooker

from Small Rain. © Purple Flag Press, 2014.