fall is come

[marycatelli]

A brilliant amber butterfly, hovering over bright yellow hop clover.

The night, for a moment, purest white as lightning flashes, and no thunder sounds after as darkness succeeds what it preceded.

Crows, in the gusty air after the hurriciane, fly an uneven path, buffetted to and fro by the gusts.

Heat waves emerge from the car in silence and invisible, but you can see their shadows, twisting on the ground like smoke -- or like the shadows of a creek's ripples, on the creek's bed.

The trees begin to turn, gold showing among the tree -- not a bright, clear yellow, but a patined gold, as if the treasure ship had run ashore a century ago, or pirates had hastily hid their treasure before the navy descended on them.

Sunset sunlight seeping under the clouds, touching the lower portions of them with gold: brilliant curlicues against the cobalt blue clouds, and golden fish scales in even lines, and threads of gold, like neatly combed hair, and others like the uncarded wool of a celestial sheep.

The sky still blue, however dark, and the moon hanging right over the horizon, round, and the shade of red like that of the artificial dye used to color maraschino cheries.

the moon in the evening sky like a glowing pearl ready to dissolve into the softness of blue about it. Almost while you watch -- certainly if you glance up every so often -- it takes on more definite form as the blue darkens about it.

Geese flying low -- not an inch higher than it would take to avoid the trees' topmost branches -- over the highway. Or flying equally low and half way across and then back. So low that the geese are still distinctly geese -- but they must have gotten the practice. Later, a skein of geese flying high in the air. Not a neat V shape, but shimmering lines, breaking apart and swiftly reforming -- always lines.

A field turns from corn to stubble over the weekend -- and _dried out_ stubble, with the last inch of stalk being yellow and sere. Gaggles of geese in the midst of it most mornings.

Dawn: the sky all but filled with blue-gray clouds, but sunrise coming up to touch the undersides with tangerine orange. Both of which colors can be very pretty combined with other colors.

How many birds flock together, shifting and swirling in a long ribbon across the sky, and settling on the high-tension power lines -- some of them -- others swirling and flying up and down and apparently finding it too crowded -- then they shifted over to a stand of trees and for a moment, only a handful of birds are on wing with the birds settled in two places -- and then the birds on the power lines pour over toward the trees.

Skies of thick, cobalt blue clouds, looming omninously, the sunlight every now and again coming under to trace out a tree in brilliant contrast, winds making the trees toss and shudder, their leaves never still and sometimes their branches in motion, and never ever a drop of rain -- the ground is as dry as dust after hours of it.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Heat waves emerge from the car in silence and invisible, but you can see their shadows, twisting on the ground like smoke -- or like the shadows of a creek's ripples, on the creek's bed.

I love this effect: the invisible rendered visible at on remove. Like something that can only be seen in a mirror.

[marycatelli]

It's quite intriguing. There have been times when I had to look closely to be sure whether it was ripples or their shadows.