East End Fall Impression
Fall comes fast, announced by the big back-to-school signs. It shimmers with gold, brown and burgundy.
It adorns the Indian summer with crystal dew droplets. It brings the apple orchard excursions and the smell of freshly baked apple pie cooling on the window sill.
The evening is crisp and refreshing; the night gently caresses its dark and the bare shoulders of those, who still sleep with an opened window.
Fall is a chorus of frogs in the pond philharmonic; it is the grand concert of cicadas in rag weed fields. It is streaks of rain on a foggy window pane and rays of lazy sun, shining at a sharp angle. It is the best time to take snapshots of freshmen still full of enthusiasm for school.
Fall smells of wet flora, leaves dancing in the dark shade of a naked oak. It is the flavor of freshly fallen walnuts and the spectacle of busy squirrels collecting their loot, only to forget about it in the winter time. It is the last garden cleaning, raking, snipping and shaking off the passing memories of solicitous summer nights.
Fall is a red haired wig in a striped black-orange hat and a crowd of bats cheering Dracula on the porch. It is the humid smell of sail cloth, sleeping covered in the dock and impish pumpkins smiling at the doorstep. Halloween is around the corner; a white skeleton is taking a sneak peak, hanging off of a tree. Witches are brewing their potions in black, iron cauldrons; the wind howls a gloomy song. Leaves are flying around, scared of what might be hiding in the twisted torment of shrubs.
The vineyards are turning maroon and pale yellow, vines entangled in themselves flutter in the wind like frightened spiders weaving their webs into the rubicund horizon of the North Fork.
Cooks and homemakers carelessly scatter recipes, lead stuffing, turkey and cranberry sauce endless conversations… watch out for those pyramids of cookie cutters! Oh, the bake ware dilemmas and the perpetuity of clean up battles…
Fall leaves with colossal amber sinking into the horizon. It shatters the murky blue water into orangey streamers, floating on the ocean surface. It blends with the sea, swallows the light. It leaves no trace but a tiny candle flame smelling of fruit and oriental spices. The Pine Barrens play hide and seek with the thick fog. They are like pirate ships hiding long lost treasures in their gnarly, crooked branches.
Don’t you wish autumn lasted forever? Don’t you wish the old man with white beard, wooden cane and a thick black coat never came? Instead he shows up slowly asking for pity as if to say: “you see I have arthritis too” while reaching out for your warmth-loving neck. He threatens with chilly, angry wind which sneaks up the coat and chews on your bones, and he rattles and shakes, clatters and patters until you see the first flakes of snow.
The winterized boats laugh at the naked sails of the commercial vessels that squeak from cold and discomfort of the wintry bitter nip. The ropes stand stiff longing for fishermen’s thick, leathery hands to grab and loosen them up and then disembowel from astonishingly intricate knots.
It is the decadence of the season that hits me like a howling, angry Porsche passing by the neighbor’s house. the Sound is now asleep trying to wait out the tough glacial mix; the furry winter nights are coming; tourists have fled long time ago and only the resilient Long Islanders are here to stay to face the changing of spells across the island and the currents of time.
