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Sep 29, 2000
Passing Unseen
I’ll have to ask for forgiveness.I came in a little short of twelve hours for the Equinox,
but the DMTree feast was waiting, and instructions had been issued.
And it was raining.
Not a hard rain, but a fine mist permeated the afternoon. Morning wasn’t much drier, just not quite coalesced.
Not a glimpse of Sun the whole day.
You’d like to see some Sun on the Equinox, just to know the difference between the twelve hours of day, and the twelve hours of night. This was twenty four hours of gray.
It was a day like a Catbird, which is also gray, and which was found throughout the Park. But the day was gray and quiet, while the Catbirds were gray and loud, mewing their feline calls in defiance of the sound dampening dampness.
Catbirds are common enough. They breed in the Park, but numbers must be moving through on migration just now. They were ubiquitous.
For all it’s familiarity, the Catbird has a hidden feature seldom seen: it’s got a red rear. The undertail coverts, (to put it technically), are rusty red like a Robin’s breast. The area is generally shadowed by the tail, and the bird skulks in the brush, supplying few ventral views. You know the red is there, but it’s rare to get a good look at it.
That was the Sun, on the first full day of Fall; a Catbird’s butt; somewhere behind the clouds, but never showing. Slipping out the back door with Summer; off to Southern lands, leaving the burden of yellow to the Goldenrods in the Meadow.
Color without fire,
Fall without precipice.
Under the overcast,
seasons in passing
touch.