My Slow Season…

There is no amount of films, games, Vitamin D capsules, or bottles of wine that can quench my thirst for summer.

The leaves turn, fish swim upstream to spawn, and the wind chills the air with the premonition of winter.

I find joy in the final moments of changes taking place, watching my peaks slowly turn into valleys.

The sun rises later than usual, as do I, and sets earlier, quicker than my mind can adjust to the concept of lost time.

A nip in the air becomes damp, and the grass comes out of hibernation, grasping for what little light it can find between blanketing clouds.

When procrastination becomes the standard, days slip away from me, like beads of water on a windshield in a downpour.

Activity goes dormant, physically, mentally, sinking into the depths of emotion, stirring things I have suppressed without regard to the imminent arrival of the season.

Rain clogs the gutters with fallen leaves and patches of black ice cover my escape route as I try to slip away to a brighter place.

The ground collects snow, and I find contentment in the irony that now I’m not the only one with nowhere to go.

All we can do is wait helplessly, impatiently, for the warm, yellow orb to reappear from behind the Earth’s gray atmosphere.

Growing tired of being held captive by our place in orbit, we venture out into a wasteland of damp, white precipitation, taunting Old Man Winter.

An act of defiance, knowing that the persistence of our mere existence will pay off when the seasons change again.

by Randall Bonner

 

-Randall Bonner

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