Todd Davis

In this low place between mountains fog settles with the dark of evening. Every year it takes some of those we love—a car full of teenagers on the way home from a dance, or a father on his way to the paper mill, nightshift the only opening. Each morning, up on the ridge, the sun lifts this veil, sees what night has accomplished. The water on our window- screens disappears slowly, gradually, like grief. The heat of the day carries water from the river back up into the sky, and where the fog is heaviest and stays longest, you’ll see the lines it leaves on trees, the flowers that grow the fullest.

On the ridge above Skelp Road bears binge on blackberries and apples, even grapes, knocking down the Petersens’ arbor to satisfy the sweet hunger that consumes them.  Just like us they know the day must come when the heart slows, when to take one more step would mean the end of things as they should be.  Sleep is a drug; dreams its succor.  How better to drift toward another world but with leaves falling, their warmth draping us, our stomachs full and fat with summer?