Pastorals

By noon, now in mid-September, tall shadows are already looming, dark and melodramatic, striping the lawn and garden. Friendly ghosts remain, but most of the guests have receded, each taking with them a jar of applesauce to taste or inhale and remember. Or to give away. Emptier, the house seems both bigger and smaller. A cycle fills with stillness. Silence grows on the trees. These last mornings I put on the rubber boots I bought at Morrison's Feed Bag, the crimson boots imprinted with yell...