Autumn Sunday

Sunday. A day that has always carried with it enforced rest, in the back of her mind.

And what's worse, it's autumn, the least enjoyed season, and the most challenging when it comes to skirting deep winter induced depression.

Everything that could happen in the way of bad events seems to happen in the fall of the year. The word, fall, itself, conjures up grim memories of bygone days and hours. It was in the fall that she fell, never to walk properly again, and it was in the fall the forced separation from her mother when she was seven years old took place, leaving a bitter segment behind itself that never sweetened with time, and it was in the fall she'd made hard decisions concerning other lives that depended on wisdom she was unsure of, and on and on...

The sun shines with a defiant brilliance, while swarms of birds shriek and complain of the upcoming trip south. They are everywhere, cacophonous and repellent. Starlings, the accidental natives, with little to commend them as birds go, perch in the trees all around her home. They make it impossible to ignore the cold northern air that has settled over the region. They are the harbingers of discomfort.

They fall silent as suddenly as they had begun the discussion of flight plans. It is eerily quiet, save for the music coming from the living room. From the same window through which she watched the disappearance of the blue and white umbrella, she sees the flight resume. A mass exodus.

When the geese begin their journey to a more amenable clime, the vision of their chevron flight which invokes poetry so easily in many, strikes her with great deep sadness, while at the same time, thrilling her with it's perfection, and more so when they break ranks and engage in a chaos of design.

Their cries across evening skies that are often shot through with outrageous sunset colors lining charcoal clouds, say less of abandonment than invitation to come along.

Come…fly with us, we know the way to escape from this, and as you like us, we like you. Come be with us. You will be one of us; you will be a kindred soul among us. We will alight near friendly waters, and we will coast on the winds, and warm air will caress us into a sense of continuity, and safety.

But she has no wings.