It’s fall now. In the yard before dawn there is a sharp edge to the air that wasn’t around a few weeks ago. The morning has metallic tang. The boundless sky is indigo and then cobalt. All the stars are scattered sparklers gripped in the fists of galaxy-sized kids. Clear brisk vampire night slips back into the shadows as the fresh old sun agrees to do it all again.
Out across the creek the crows are calling out to one another, their charcoal forms like floating ghosts traveling from treetop to treetop. The other birds make no sound, only listen. None dare intrude until the crows have had their say. What is it that they are saying? It seems as if they are saying a lot. Cawing forcefully, with confidence, is the only way the crow knows. In the morning, when the world is waking, they speak of noble things in noble tones. Some say you can understand them if you take the time to listen. Yet no one knows for certain and no one ever will.
Down on the damp ground the tired woods tower above the things that lurk there. A deer paws at an acorn and sniffs the silence. Her ears twitch to hear what no man could ever hear. Beside her there is a fawn of the year and he is uncertain but unbothered. He’s absorbed in the first skirmishes of light colliding. Snow isn’t so far off but the deer never rush their days. A ragged red maple towers above the two. Her name is misleading. Her leaves are all the color of pumpkins. Loosening her grip, she allows a selection of her very best to spin away from their branch. They sashay beside one another oblivious to their own sure fate. This freedom of fleeting flight will soon give way to a fallen nature. And with it, both death and stillness will ensue. For now though, the first leaf whirls its way down to Earth stopping only for the briefest moment so that it can balance itself on the wettish black nose of the juvenile buck. There, it poises itself, halfway between staying and going, propped upon some unseen puff the deer has exhaled. An instant later, the fawn watches as his leaf departs for its final resting place on the forest floor. He stares at it a while, then touches it tenderly with his right front hoof. But the excellence the leaf possessed just moments ago has transitioned. What once was motion is now still and serene. The doe pays neither any mind. Her son and his leaf are left to figure things out on their own.
Back over in the town, a school bus chugs up the road as dawn breaks. The engine climbs through its gears as the crows continue conference atop the highest limbs. Songbirds have now joined the choir and to hear them all singing their way into the murder talk and the bus is to unlock, at last, the root cellar of jazz. Children’s voices are sometimes present, but always at remarkable distance. They seem to appear out of nowhere, the tiny tones of carefree youth, but then, they disappear just as swiftly as they showed up. And what remains then are the most quizzical expressions on the faces of each and every creature that stopped to listen. Perplexed and unsure, each wonders to themself if that was a real child. Or if it was purely the memory of one.
Out by the gas station, a kettle of vultures drifts out of the towering hemlocks. In staggered sequence, the genetics of their prehistoric system squirms out of the calamus tunnels of their feathers and lays out the plan. Then they float out over the cemetery with a raging silence that unnerves both mouse and squirrel below. The peculiar birds are some dark squadron of war planes. Appearing out of nowhere, their collective presence takes the breath away from those who gaze upon them. They emanate horrors unspoken yet are drenched in the strangest grace. Unraveling their vast bodies upon primordial tides, the vultures carve wide circles above worn out headstones far below. They skate upon the sky, never moving a wing; they’ve given up flying through the sky in favor of sailing upon it.
Which leads us to the dead.
For down in the ground the dead are waking. Stirred by gentle footsteps on the roof above their rooms, they sit up like Christmas kids ablaze with anticipation. The dirt is nothing but air to the deceased and as such, they rise to move freely below the surface of things. They walk from place to place unencumbered by root or stone, always remembering to traipse slowly so that the day means the most it can. To rush from place to place is a flaw of the living. And if nothing else can be said of them, the dead have learned their lessons.
Under the mini market, the dead congregate. There, in the dark of their world, they lay their own hands upon the shoulders of others. This they do for various reasons, but chiefly it seems to be a way for them to soothe one another. The dead can become very sad, you see. The fact that they are forever separated from life and all of its charms is never lost on them.
How quick my days went by, they commiserate.
How much I miss the ones that I loved.
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Serge Bielanko lives in small-town Pennsylvania with an amazing wife who’s out of his league and a passel of exceptional kids who still love him even when he’s a lot. Every week, he shares his thoughts on life, relationships, parenting, baseball, music, mental health, the Civil War and whatever else is rattling around his noggin.
