Not Here.

On my porch, St. Arnold and I toast each other in a fall ceremonial.

I’m not the only one. He’s clinking steins with all the others who plunked him into their shopping baskets this week. But we share a moment so I’m not really here drinking alone. Although I might prefer it, these weekend evenings on the stoop, light growing soft, and I could sit here till moonlight, the palette-shift from warm to cools.

This is the way of the world, I know. What we really mark in the season-turning is a leaving. A parting with something vital. It always leaves me a little melancholy, the bloom off the rose of summer.

Sad isn’t it? I think as the day shifts, the season, a season of life. The balance of orange and green steady my thoughts or I’d tumble faster toward the dark. But in my mind I’m further back, a vanilla dress on some patio, all sunlight and bougainvillea, Prosecco-fluted, strawberry-lipped, aswirl in a frothy moment. It could go on and on, backward like that.

“That’s not this moment” some gestalt voice says somewhere. The streaming chatter of the now, the parade of focused joggers, the intentionality of the dogwalkers fail to tether me. “Where are you?” It’s mid-October in this instance.

Now, I’ve known other falls. Falling outs. Falling fors. Things falling in line. Things falling by the wayside. But in this moment, a falling through. The warpnet of time and space cannot hold. I’m not here. I’m somewhere else.