elegy for September

Now that I've lived here a month, the idea of pining after unreachable blackberries seems as ridiculous as the time the sunlight on Point Reyes shocked me after a night of rain.

September passed in a wash of sunlight. For a few days, here and there, Seattle lived up to its reputation and sat morosely in a chill drizzle. But so far, for the most part, the expected winter rains have held off.

I ate up all the sunlight that I could, walking to Gasworks Park every couple of days, and filling my palms with the blackberries that grow here like weeds. Fat, purple blackberries so ripe they nearly melted off the branches. They stained my fingers and the white bowl I poured them into when I brought a shirt-full of them home, one afternoon.

Under Aurora Bridge the water glittered as the sun sank down, slowly turning the sky gold, then pink, then quiet purple. The skyscrapers of Seattle's downtown hold the light longer than the low green hills where white houses cluster into neighborhoods. They glow a lavendar-tinged gold: straightbacked, flatfaced, a blind and shining gaze over the water.

Now, October's begun at last. Delicious October, the month of leaves, of the early slow death that brings no grief. October with its garish melancholy. It delights me.