Seasonal Autumn

The plurality of my days is lived in not-so-splendid isolation.

Language; numbers; baseball: one might think that fellow travelers would be so thick, I’d have to brush them away from my face.

Do you feel the emptiness as baseball’s division titles are clinched? It’s not the post-season that warms us and animates our being – it’s the humane rhythms of the six-plus months that precede. The playoffs arrive; the playoffs conclude; a winner is declared: the beloved elderly uncle finally expires – a cluster of loved ones nearby.

The thought creeps forward: “What am I gonna do until March?”

Rogers Hornsby spoke it true: “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

The very large window at my desk-side overlooks downtown Augusta, Georgia – through which I note daily a procession of passersby. The leaves will soon begin to yellow, then fall from the Chinese Elm whose branch wind-grazes my view of this world. The pane will grow cold to my touch; before Spring, I might see a snow flurry. Or two. A monthly monotony of secular and religious holidays will be noted, pedestrians of my spiritual calendar. Football-rabid southerners will approach me on the street, asking, “Where yuh been, bo-uh? Ah ain’t seen yoo since Labor Day. How ’bout them Dawgs?!?”

I have my language and my numbers, and I belong to a congregation of fellow spring-awaiters – appreciative of clarity, and of its fluid nature, and of the portal, baseball.