in the first cold sun of 2012
black cat’s tail
twitches brown
on the threshold
of the first rat
the view from my front room
I’ve already hung jack-o’-lantern lights, and the first good autumn rain is using my walls and roof as its own soft percussion section. Yet from my top-floor flat, I can still see plenty of green leaves. One of these trees, now still mostly green, gave me the first hints that fall was coming back in August when a few of its leaves turned yellow.
In a city that’s home to deciduous trees, it’s the trees that tell you first when the seasons are changing.
Those yellow leaves have since turned gold and then brown and fallen down. Other parts of town have more leaves on the walkways (they don’t survive long on the roads); all month, I’ve taken time, on those rare dry days, to crunch through drifts of leaves on my way to the office or the library. A few times I’ve jumped from pile to pile instead of just stomping through.
Already I’m thinking about how I won’t accept that it’s winter until the last leaves have fallen, leaving behind branches and trunks that grow dark and slick in the rain—no matter how many layers I’m wearing before that happens. Given how slick last year’s snow made the sidewalks, I try not to think about the dark wood taking on a white outline.
None of these changes happen all at once. We choose dates and times to say when one season ends and another begins, when we change our clocks, when we pull out our boxes of scarves and thick sweaters. The trees warn us when these days approach but, more importantly, they show how arbitrary these moments are. Seasonal change, and the turning of the leaves, is a process, not a moment.
And my writing process is a bit like that process. I don’t write in discrete first, second, and third drafts: some paragraphs may have been written and rewritten multiple times before other are made more than an outline. Trees don’t make sure that all their leaves have turned red or yellow before they begin to lose them. Some leaves are still producing plenty of chlorophyll while others have already curled, dried, and fallen.
Queen's University Belfast Quad, September 2009
by EKSwitaj on Flickr
When I was flat-hunting last summer, I fell in love with the apartment where I write this now because of the view. While washing my dishes or waiting anxiously for the kettle to boil so I can make another French press full of coffee (I’ll let you guess which one of these I do more often), I can see rooftops and green hills beyond them—except at night when city and suburban lights become the highlight. From my desk, in my front room, I can watch the sunset beyond a stone church steeple and, yes, more green hills.
by DH Wright on Flickr
What I didn’t expect was the way the slender trees that line this block of brick row houses draw birds to them. Every day, they break their flights in the branches: for most, the trees here serve only as a place to rest and sing a bit or find a tasty insect.
This past spring, a pair of collared doves set up a nest, but they abandoned it before even laying any eggs. Maybe the streetlights got to them, or they wisely left before the most common avian visitor to the trees could prey on their young.
by Steve-h on Flickr
Magpies, with patches of shimmering blue on their wings, love this block. Usually, I hear them before I see them. They declare whatever it is they have to declare, and I look up from the screen to see them preening in the trees or, on occasion, on my window sill. The magpies are the only birds with the courage to get that close.
Because of the reputed intelligence of magpies, I sometimes ask them for their opinion on my thesis. I try not to take it too personally when their calls sound like laughter.
Yesterday on my run, I saw a heron on a snag. At the sound of overexcited dogs running up the path above the river, it spread its wings but did not flee.
Today on my run, I saw a pigeon on the sidewalk. It had a round, bloody hole in its chest with bits of viscera and vertebrae sticking out.
Magdalene & the Mermaids
Elizabeth Kate Switaj's First Collection of Poetry
Available From Reviewed at Sample poems at
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