An Original Haibun

All Within a Changing Seasons

I long for the chill of an Autumn night. True autumn, not too humid, for that is still summer. Nor too cold, causing shivers, for that already is winter. Just the absolute perfection of crisp honeyed air, a hint of apple cider on the back of the tongue. I long for the kind of night when inspiration is guaranteed, when my muse can’t keep herself from coming to dance.

For these few days we are friends, genuinely enjoying each others’ company, as the luscious nights fill with scribbled ideas on cocktail napkins, and advertising flyers and the backs of hands when words still aren’t through. When I tire, I don’t have to turn to know she is gone.

But whether this was due to my own exhaustion, too many ideas taken down and partially developed too quickly to not lose the moment. Or perhaps my exhaustion is but a reflection of her own so she felt the need to flee. Anything further from me tonight will come from sheer work devoid of inspiration.

But even though the time of ideas has passed for now, it is not frustration that I feel, but a delicious weariness of played out creativity. It is the feeling of coming in out of the sun after a wonderful day of pure happiness along the shore line. Now, like then, I stay a bit longer in this mindset.

The night grows deeper, darker, blacker still, til the moon, totally eclipsed, turns to blood. With no one else to notice it, it bends toward the breakwater and me. Not wanting to disappoint, I move hesitantly to meet it, but stop just short. I don’t think I am meant to climb right beneath it’s red drenched mantle and so I stand back.

Even far away I must crane my neck to take in it’s enormous girth. I look directly at it as a more normal light begins to seep around the edges of Luna’s gentle form, causing the deep red to pinken, like a false sunrise. The stars, like gemstones, flicker to life again, scared before by the unusual machinations of the planets, which even ones as old as they have only observed a handful of times.

But even as I gaze upon the rust colored orb set aways a distance, it leans in closer and I can see it’s outline freed from the earth on which I stand. Without need for words or ideas, my writing done, I can just appreciate it, let it fill me up, it’s power washing over me, washing me clean of another year’s disappointment.

Within me, the blood red moon shifts the clear cool air to gently move my summer scents of vanilla and gardenia and usher in my winter with to scent of cinnamon. For an instant I can smell all three and feel them on my lips.

I close my eyes, inhale deep, then open them to see all about me the wistful stars. They caper and careen as if they are courting, their pale faces turned up in joyful supplication, hopeful in the coming of a glorious future. Their dance says they wish the same for us.

early sleepless fall yearning for what never was mind sharpened heart hopes

Natalie Frank (Taye Carrol) has had work featured in Haunted Waters Press, Weirdbook Magazine, Siren’s Call Publications, Lycan Valley Press & Zero Fiction among others. Her poetry has been featured in several anthologies. She is Editor for 1-One-Infinity, The Partnered Pen & One Table, One World and is Editor in Chief for Promposity & Mental Gecko. She is also the Managing Editor for Novellas & Serials at LVP Publications.

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