PAUL CHRISTENSEN

It will rain all day today here in Halloween-colored Vermont. The maples will lose many of their remaining leaves and look off with stoic expressions at being naked again. The fields are already black and sodden from earlier rains. The road is jeweled with tiny puddles and elaborate silvery veins. We are easing ourselves into the cold weather, and it makes the house tick like a clock. Overhead, the sky is a chaos of quilt folds and rumpled sheets. My worn out cardigan has spr

The magpies have all packed up and left with the last straggling tourists. I don't hear their falsetto cries anymore, and I miss them. I love to see two such tuxedoed birds on a branch over the road chattering away like prom dates before the music starts. They're gone and they have left behind the empty branches of gnarled oak trees. The wind rattles the last few leaves on their limbs and the long shadows devour the crumbs of last summer's hopes. You feel the black silk of th

Such sudden cool weather has me rushing to the car to get some free heat from the sun. The house is cold, the stones are numb with last night's frost; the birds have fallen silent like children after being scolded. You get the feeling that nothing is soft or pliable anymore. It's all a construction of jagged limestone and splintered wood, and the occasional reassurance of wood smoke dribbling out of chimneys. I sit in the car waiting for the desire to start it up and head for