Barbet

 

Barbet / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

AUTUMN MOVED IN on Saturday, and just like that, summer is over. The south wind has become a north wind. The garden seems to be done. Birds are flocking up, and already, some are gone. 

The summer weekenders seem to be not interested in Wachapreague any more, in spite of the covid and the work-from-home mentality. I guess this is not home to them, any more than it is to the birds. 

But I have new chairs for the back yard, and the lawn guy has fixed the fallen branch that had crashed over and through the fence. I've found my long pants and long-sleeved shirts, and am painting with renewed vigor. 

I love the fall, and always have. Peter did, too. He is all that is missing. 

Dressed for the season, in what my friend Kevin's mother would call three "fancies." 

***

A Final Thought

Housekeeping

We mourn the broken things, chair legs

wrenched from their seats, chipped plates, 

the threadbare clothes. We work the magic

of glue, drive the nails, mend the holes.

We save what we can, melt small pieces

of soap, gather fallen pecans, keep neck bones

for soup. Beating rugs against the house,

we watch dust, lit like stars, spreading

across the yard. Late afternoon, we draw

the blinds to cool the rooms, drive the bugs

out. My mother irons, singing, lost in reverie.

I mark the pages of a mail-order catalog,

listen for passing cars. All day we watch

for the mail, some news from a distant place. 

- Natasha Tretheway