Eager

The frost is ten days late. Ten days for larger pumpkins. Ten days for pretending the state of things isn’t constantly flowing.

Our pumpkin patch out at the library has three holdover green pumpkins still greedily feeding from vines, but the cold is finally arriving. I’ve been watching the weather channel app with an eagle eye and these holdouts are just days away from having to let go. 

I’m greedy too, but for the first symptoms of what Vonnegut called “Locking” in November and December. The quick crunch of the leaves under my feet.  Seeing for miles in bare branched forests. Colorado snow.  (Colorado snow during Locking is powder. Just brush it off.)

The frost covers are ready for the fall rainbow chard, lettuce and kale. I think they’ll make it.

Until Persephone is sucked back down to the underworld, of course. It’s in Locking, not Winter, where we lose all the light.

No wonder the ghosts gather between moments and spill into the ether on Halloween. 

I’m digging in this year. This season, this month, this day, this moment.  This is my spot on earth. This is what “now” is here.