Detritus

The leaves of the scarlet oak (Quercus coccinea) have come to dominate the piles of dead leaves around the yard. This species, yet another common tree of the region, although in its northernmost habitat here, is partial to poor sandy upland soils; it must be in heaven in the ground where it grows across the right-of-way. This is the fastest growing of the oaks, and, so says the experts, shoots quickly up into the air for 20 years before it reaches maturity and begins to drop seed. It cannot stand shade, so if it does not attain canopy status, it will not survive. The sprouts around its base are not scarlet oak, but some other variety of the same species. Waiting. The tree that dropped these leaves is probably 40 years old and has reached about half its full potential height. It held its leaves until just before the killing frost and then dropped them, as most trees tend to, in a sudden fall - over the course of several hours one morning, they simply drifted off the branches like snowflakes and landed on our driveway. This pile will be pressed and fed into our composter where it will become soil next year or the year after. Our neighbors send their lawn piles away in large brown bags where someone else will make soil and sell it back to them. We hold ours and cook it ourselves. The trees always cooperate, whatever the species.

Cut light and cold air pressing down from the Arctic. We all need to sleep more. The trees go dormant. All but the heartiest of green plants have withered and retreated for the season. No bird song at sunrise, but for the complaining crow and occassional migrating flock of geese. The transitions are everywhere, quietude is upon us. Ironically, at this onset of winter, when life takes a break and waits for the light of January, the political winds are blowing spring-like. Over weeks now, as if a a pile of festering swamp-rot has been opened to the oxidizing processes of the open atmosphere, the gasses of corruption and ineptitude have wafted into the air. Beneath the swamp, we knew the rotting was taking place, but no one can ignore the stench of methane. Desperate grasps for the rhetorical high-ground seem laughable, now that the swamp is exposed. The methane of rot permeates every crevice. The match is on the flint. We enter fall delighted.