| The End of the World Weather |
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| by Gale Renee Walden |
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At the end of the world the weather in the Midwest is surprisingly breezy. It’s November. The leaves have started to fall, then stopped falling. In a season when branches are usually emptied of content, some trees remain green and tall against a sky Magritte might have painted. The day has turned early into dark but people are still sitting outside on porch swings and picnic tables watching the world lumber on. Halloween passed two weeks ago and on that night, a torrential rain fell. Only the undecorated teenagers lurched about the streets, black garbage bags held above their heads. All the small fairies and witches stayed inside handing out candy to the ordinary, which is something like how the weather has been reversed. Beside my porch in the hackberry tree, birds have paused in their journey south. All across the country the weather has been putting people in their places or taking them out and setting them down someplace else. Many things have been misplaced. Even smells. One step that doesn’t break mother’s back, there’s a crisp leaf aroma, the next step: lavender, hibiscus. Who knows what it all means? But there are other things going on which suggest the climate doesn’t bode well. Hurricane lamps dot my porch and from the lawn chair, I watch as the bicyclists whip through the gold that has already fallen. Little leaf funnels rise up toward wayward chirping. I am thinking: Berries, Magritte, Apple Pie. And how hard it would be to give it all up in a flash, or through slow suffocation, because even in this, it’s lovely the way we destroy ourselves.
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