Inexorable

At first light, I walked in the woods and gathered some plant material for an art project. A curious bull crept up on me while I was trespassing in his pasture and when I turned around, the shock of seeing the massive black creature staring at me rooted me to the spot. I was grateful that he accepted my apology, which took the form of me averting my eyes and slowly backing away until I got to the fence line. Once on the safe side of the fence, I watched him amble across the field, noting the knotted muscles undulating beneath his hide, the soft earth splitting apart at the sheer mass of his body moving across it on hooves, and I could not help thinking of how it could have gone had he decided to have a little sport with the scrawny intruder.

Standing and watching, I became aware of the morning’s sounds. I became aware of my own breathing. I became aware of the crickets. Crickets. An autumnal sound, and is that song being sung already? The air, even in the oven air of July, felt different, felt altered. The passage of time since yesterday seemed suddenly vast and incomprehensible, as if I had hibernated through entire seasons. As summer dies and its descendant approaches, an undeniable stillness sits in the air, no matter the time of day, and all the natural world seems to be watching. Perhaps the animals discuss such things among themselves. Perhaps spiders nod to each other in wistful agreement that things are drawing to a close, that the crypt of freezing winter is soon to be shut upon them. The line of time is inexorable, and its long stretch bats aside all attempts to dissuade, to reason, to interrupt.  It has always been this way.

The fledgling ravens in their hiding place

Are intolerant of any delay

That pins to earth the exercise of grace

Within the soaring hours of day.

~ S.K. Orr