The streets have lost their double lining of parked cars.
November turns its cold shoulder, and north wind slams doors.
Dead leaves swarm, gray clouds pile up over the bay, and
“closed for the season” signs appear in windows of stores.
Sidewalk sales, parades, county fairs and football season pass,
cars track new snow in the street; one morning the beach bleaching surf
and the spray over the channel light abruptly stop at first ice.
The rapids on Bear River narrow, and the town stands in silence.
The News and Review reports the first fisherman to fall through thin ice;
the first hunter to fall out of his tree stand; the first day the ski hills open.
A child bobs down his first snow hill, falls off at the bottom in delight.
An insurance agent in the attic of an old warehouse addresses calendars.
The young boy at the library on Mitchell Street reads his first lines
of Hemingway, Faulkner, or Fitzgerald; an old man with dementia stands
stationary on the corner not knowing where to go next; in a second story loft,
a yoga instructor softly encourages a young woman dying of cancer.
In a coffee shop, a boy and girl bend their heads together over hot chocolate;
in the public restroom, a homeless man washes and changes dirty clothes;
above the General Store, an artist stretches his arm to brushstroke a canvas;
old friends meet for lunch and hang their coats on familiar hooks.
On a side street in rehab, men and women confront their addictions;
on the other end of town, an old woman lays in the hospice house; nearby
a retired couple walk their dog through the abandoned streets of Bay View.
Re-sized for winter, we slow our pace, settle in, move closer to each other in bed.
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