Shenandoah

In a valley of unparalleled beauty fall settles down over the trees

and everywhere the air comes into itself again after long absence.
The sky unblues as lights come on in the Rubbermaid factory.
And it is well made. The gate retracts on its soundless carriage
and retracts again and soon the sulfur lamps which had been dim
and regularly spaced are filled in with the bluer cast of halogen,
the green of fluorescent, coming on all over the factory campus.
Doors and people shake hands, the ritual exchange and breath in
the face.
The patterns are so ingrained that they continue to be filled, to be
echoed
today; but nothing calls for them today. Perhaps it is Sunday
or perhaps the long collapse of Americanitas has stumbled at last
to this atopic close. In any case, the parachutists rain down in the
effervescent
drizzle, for the end of days or the Marine Corps marathon. And, like
them,
the seedheads of acer saccharum and saccharinum (smaller and
more numerous),
loosed by the coming storm, fall, carrying their flags. Somewhere in
one of the vast
Wal Mart parking lots (three at least, a fourth fifteen miles up)
there is a parking space (10x22)
untouched by this samarafall; but it is impossible to tell it is
impossible to tell.
Abridgement is the character of going on, whatever the cost.