The leaves on the old red oak in front of the barn are an orange-brown. Not the orange color of the sunset over Beacon Street at six-thirty this time of year, but more the orange that pops out of the fire, with a smooth stream of butterscotch yellow painting up over the surface with the pitch of the dark brown deeper flame just behind. It’s that color of orange. The color that comes between and brushes it’s way up into the flu and out over the roof to the cold air, and falls to the roof like rain.

This time of year, every time I go outside the old red oak is different. Every morning the kids walk by the house, down over the sidewalk and I say “Hello,” but they never say anything back. I never blame them. I sit alone here every day. They walk by and their conversations become louder, loud enough so that I can hear them laugh when the dark brown haired boy teases the blonde haired girl with the pink backpack. She isn’t yet old enough for her asphodel yellow hair to fade down to the dullness of ditchwater. She shines, not just in the reflection of the wavy strands hanging down her back, but her face exudes this sort of nuclear energy. Like millions of tiny particles of light are tangled up inside her head-- getting into line until it’s their turn to fly out of her eyes. It’s magical, that kind of innocence. It hasn’t yet been cracked by heaps of accidental sharpened stones, banging and bruising once and then threatening to reappear. Nor has it been touched yet by lost jobs and lost minds and loss, the loss of a child when she’s only seven years old because of dehydration and no insurance. It’s fresh and clear and white and powerful, and it screams “You can’t hurt me, I have nothing to give you...yet.”

Meanwhile, one of the leaves from the lowest branch slips off of its roost and is asleep before it hits the ground, stirring just gently enough to rearrange the covers, getting lost in the down of orange-brown blankets before it. Not the orange-brown in the mid-light glow of fire, but more the brown of a slick old stained walnut cupboard that has been kept clean from years of dusting and oiling and there are no hard surfaces on its boards. Instead, it is soft and thick like it had an ocean of water pressing up from underneath it in waves mellowed from last night’s storm. It is rich and whole, the way wood should be when it looks just right; never new; never sharp, true.

A word about this piece from the author:

 I have series of visual writing practices that I call "Snapshots." A good photographer tells a story in an image. It evokes emotion. A time or a place. A personality. Even if we haven't visited or don't know the subject, we see it and relate it to something we know. We fill in the details from our own story. I wanted my snapshots to do the same thing. I wanted to paint you a visual picture with a hint of emotional context and let your imagination do the rest.