If I could fill my blank page with words that made up the most perfect ending to a season that has given us her all, glorious and blue, green and orange and wildflower purple and full of life, I would give to the wind a voice. And he would speak deep and coarse about the way the grass bent beneath him as he worked to push the storms through the buttes and over the prairies.

He would tell us how he worried it might not dry up, how he watched as our lands soaked with water forcing trees to uproot and slide down the hills, and rivers to rise and fill up our homes. He would cry on these pages. He would say “it had to be…it had to be so, just as I must take the leaves from your trees.” And then he would laugh a big laugh at the way our hair stands on end when he comes around and how we lean into him out here…

the way we loathe him and need him and keep him under our skin all at once.

If I wrote the book I’d make the wind tell us. 

If I could paint the most beautiful cool down, I would splash the canvas with gold and deep rich pinks and burgundy hues. I would use my soft brush to give the sky more clouds, thousands of clouds, fluffy and white, a stage for the sun to dance upon, to reflect her light, to choreograph her show the way it was meant.

I would paint the warmth of her glow on horses’ backs and splash her down between the shadows of the trees where the deer go to water. And next to the barn the cats would bask in the light–the light I would make live forever on that canvas. Forever in that space between day and night, sun and storm…warm and cold…

if I were to paint the cool down I would use all of my brushes and all of my colors.

If I were to sing from my soul an encore for the season’s end I would put the chorus on the wings of the geese. And as they took flight, catching that wind, touching those golden clouds, out from their lungs the world would hear a song so true and pure that up from the depth of the ponds and streams the frogs would find the harmony and the waterbugs would hum along.

The wild elk bedded down in the tall yellow grass would throw their heads back and bugle a sad, sad song of goodbye, the crickets would cry and the coyotes would take to the hilltops. The kittens would purr softly, the mice would hold still already and the cattle would stop their chewing to hear as the verses moved from the crocus to long days and onto cool rain.

And the third verse would swell and blend with the howling house dogs and the last screech of the red tailed hawk as the bridge pushed us to the end and then set us up with a prelude to a season changing…

And the geese would fade out for they’re heading south and in their place would be only the sound of winter…

a new quiet chorus repeats…

…another pallet of blues and grays…

…and a familiar wind to remind us.