Not Every Eagle . . .

 . . . is bald, nor every bird an eagle.

Leaves are changing color, the air is cold at night.  The Tigers are playing for the pennant.


I am running out of time to post fleeting memories of the birds and stones of summer.

 

A turkey led her family across the road 

to disappear in the shadows of the tall grass.

 

High overhead, a silhouette circled, but when I looked more closely afterwards, I saw it was not another bald eagle after all.

Perhaps it was an osprey.

The light flashing off the feathers of the gull made him stall for a moment in his path across my field of vision, and months later, in another place, he still hangs there, suspended on his way to a place I never saw him reach.


 The days began twice each morning, the first flash opening the sky only to disappear again behind the clouds that fringed the horizon. 

 Only once the sun was well up would those clouds burn away and let the business of the slow build of summer heat get serious about its business. 

These days, looking back at those images, it's easy to remember the warmth that does not reach us as the late afternoon sun slants through the autumn colors.

I can hardly remember my own shadow, stretching out faintly across the water along the brightly lit breakwater

And the island floating magically at sunset.