There was a battle yesterday. While you were busy driving to work or to school or to coffee or to the store to have your fall pants hemmed the battle raged. It was fought above and around and next to you, but you paid more attention to your job or that latte or those brown pants that have always been an inch too long. It was violent at times, and bloody, too. I’d say the trees swayed, but swaying is what trees do in the summer and it’s generally pleasant for the trees. They didn’t sway yesterday, they tussled. They shook. They were bent and some broke, the pressure from the changing sky was just too much for the dried, sun bleached limbs of summer. Casualties mounted and you just drove around like none of it mattered. Rain came and rain went and the sun was out and then it wasn’t. The winds whipped and the clouds fell lower and lower. More rain. Late in the evening my air conditioner turned off and my house was still. There was no noise until my blind and deaf dog peed on the floor of my bedroom at 4 am.
Today it’s clear who won. Fall won. September won. My desire to watch football and wear pants again won. That’s not to say that it won’t be summer later today and again tomorrow and that doesn’t mean we won’t be sweating on a Sunday afternoon six weeks from now while the sun beats and the skies shine. But it does mean that the change is here. It happened yesterday, when summer thought about fall, and you were too busy with those long brown pants to even notice.