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Member-only story
Poetry and illustration
Scruffle Crunch
A poem undaunted by chilly forecasts
13 leaves
Pages sliding over curbs
Oak and maple
Brittle piles
Of unread lives
Raked and swept
A tunnel improbable
Under shifting canopy
Chipmunk corridor
In yellow red
And crumbling brown
Rodents race
In acorn rhapsody
Soft shelter
From trampling storms
My cheeks are full
Stretched by winter wisdom
Chittering
Empty protests
Quicker under the leaves
Than you could possibly imagine
___
By Doodleslice 2024–10–09
Lovely friends, thank you for visiting here again. I know this has been a moody space lately, so I appreciate you all the more for venturing back after experiencing some of my previous oddities and angst. And, of course my impish desire to twist whimsical words around wicked bones and things that rhyme bump in the night.
Much as I relish the onomatopoetic potential of creaking floorboards in a haunted junk drawer, today I wanted to share something a little more sonorous — gentle, not creepy. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll pull my skeleton onto the outside and hide in the shadows behind the kitchen door waiting for just the perfect pouncing moment. I might say, “boo!” or intone a deep and throaty, “whooo-ooooo-oooo…”, but I’m on a more pastorale vibe today.
It’s fall.
And thanks to Helene, it’s already been a hard fall for a lot of good people. As I write this, Milton is making his mischief, and tomorrow could be very hard indeed for a whole lot more good folks.
Just people trying to live. Trying to get on and get ahead. They deserve a little gentleness — I can’t stop fall, nor the storms it brings, but I can do what I can, here with these words, to muffle the howl that the wind screams through the panes of shuttered windows. I can rake up a soft leafy pile, so that, if only for a moment as you read, if you must fall, you can fall gently.
I wish I could offer you more.
