While we can still speak

As we slip into November darkness, when long shadows cast fears deeper than words, when a plant struggles to catch the last few rays of the sun before dropping its last leaf, mortality bubbles through the late autumn mist.

The shadows will be lengthening for the next six weeks.

The world is dying.

No, not Irish whiskey....from Pandora's Parlor.

After a body breathes its last around here, it ends up at one of our local morgues, their names emblazoned on the t-shirts of local children's baseball teams. Zarro's. O'Boyle's. Levandoski's. Each home marks the arrival of a new wave of European immigrants not so long ago.

When a body is embalmed, its blood is drained into the town's sewers, food for the unseen microscopic critters teeming a few feet below our streets. Autumn means little to them.


We sing praises over the cadaver, words we wish we shared with the living, words the dead wish they had shared with us.

Might as well speak them now, while we can. 

We got work to do.