Description Play

Fall is flirting with these early mornings—cool and crisp.

This early morning, a cool breeze fans the machine shop. Floating through the air, remnants of former sparks land on my jacket and chaps as lightly as snowflakes. When I catch one in my hand, it doesn’t melt into water, instead it smudges like charcoal.

Blue-flamed torches send a waterfall of yellow sparks pouring towards the concrete floor. Some sparkle and then turn to black dust before they hit the ground; others hit the cement and die out completely. The sparks are unpredictable. They have been known to wiggle inside a glove causing blistery burns.

The torches burn so intensely it’s like staring at the sun. Different shades of dark lenses, depending on eye color, are supposed to prevent blindness.

By nine am fall has retreated. The sun burns away any coolness, the wind blows warm and dry. The seasons start later now.

Grays & Yellows

Recently, the building complex owners decided to take down a tree. A couple years ago, they chopped down a tree that gave me shade in the summer and beautiful pink blossoms for a brief few weeks in the spring. The mess from falling blossoms didn’t bother me. I liked vacuuming up pink flowers from the carpet after trekking them inside.

The light is different now. The grays of shade are replaced by the white-yellows of glaring sunlight. The ground can no longer hide its gopher holes, and no longer do those spotted mushrooms grow. Right now it is as if the light is too bright for anything else to want to poke out and start to flourish.

The squirrels run down the trunk of another tree and run to the phantom trunk of the chopped down tree. The stump isn’t even there. The squirrels stop short. They look. They dart to the side; they quickly lick their paws; they turn around. They look at me with one eye as if to say, I knew there was a tree here, really there was.

They lost their storage places and maybe even a nest or two. They lost their rivals for territory, the squawking crows and blue jays. Maybe the squirrels don’t miss them so much, maybe they do. Their tails flicker and they dart off across the road.

The sunlight is supposed to encourage growth, but it was in the shade, within the darkness of the leaves, where life was free to be. Adjusting to all this light illuminating the absence will take some time.