This is the time of frost asters. The osprey have flown to South America and the sugar maple’s leaves blanket the earth around the children’s picnic table. And the mornings have become misty. Fog rises over fields of decapitated corn. Fog rises over the still water at Still Pond. The cocktail bar is preparing to release the Autumn menu:
True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! And observe how healthily — how calmly I can tell you the whole story. (Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart)
No I will not think of winter—this year I do fear it—because I’m quite enjoying fall. The crowbar WHACK! And another rusted walk-in cooler panel falls. Cloud of dust. And I leave the moldy basement headed for the sanctuary of cool autumn air. I let the dust settle and breathe crisp rejuvenation. And now the basement the rotten and soiled and molded basement is nearly free from the shackles of its filthy past it has been sanitized but not exorcised. This morning I’m traveling to Delaware for epoxy flooring and latex paint. But first I’ll stop at the local lumber yard for sheet rock to repair the ceiling. And in a few days the basement will be nearly all future and little past. And I’ll set the flame to rosemary branches and recite:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—…
(Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven)