Burning Bridges Like Matchsticks

There's a pine tree on the corner, silhouetted by the setting sun. The branches are long and ragged, and backlighting gives them the look of an afgan or a swatch of black lace. There's no warmth in the sun, not this late in the day, not this late in the season. We turn our faces towards it anyway, a dozen fleshy sunflowers waiting for our pots to be picked up and moved home.

I rode out the garden last night and spent a few minutes looking for the last tomatoes of the season. There's a hint of bitterness to them now, a sign that the sun hasn't been warm enough to ripen them to the juicy candy they were in August. My garden is relatively well tended right now, the result of a few warm afternoons when I cleared the overgrown swiss chard out and uprooted the bolted lettuce, making way for another round of tiny green brushmarks.

The garlic bed is flecked with a few wary shoots, marking the sloppiness of my harvest this summer. I've surrounded the forgotten ones with new cloves, hoping that they'll sprout and be able to store a few calories this fall before the winter descends on us in earnest. It seems unlikely right now.

As the light is failing, I wander to my neighbor's plot and pick a few handfuls of raspberries. He's unlikely to notice; from the looks of the canes, he hasn't picked in weeks. The fruits are dark purple, overripe, so soft that even my gentle handling leaves my fingers covered in sticky smears. I pop them in my mouth and they're so ripe that they've lost their tannic bite; a rush of sugar, flat and sweet and then an almost effervescent aftertaste, like the beginnings of fermentation. I don't know if it's the lateness of the season or simply that the adages about stolen fruit are true, but I walk down the path in the dusk, berries melting on my tongue, shoes squeaking on wet grass and I am content.

"I mean, I know what life is - I've slept on the ground with a good man and a bottle of whiskey."

From Lipstick and Dynamite....