Making it Up As I Go Along #559 (writing)

The Lazy Chipmunk

The first Fall walk has come today
Gone the Mosquitos of summer days
The woods now free again
Free to trample browning leaves
A lone straggler lifts into the air
No longer buzzing with ravenous purpose
Now drifting upon the breeze as dandelion pollen

A chipmunk is surprised to see me
But rather than the frantic scatter of summer
He lets out his sonar squeak with effort
And ambles only a few inches
Into his wood debris fort
Playing a lazy game of hide and seek
Expecting my laziness to match his
And have me trudge by unknowing

Had I been a raucous boy of twelve
Perhaps I'd have waged war on the chipmunk
Prodded him out with a stick
And changed the story at emergency
Claiming to have been attacked unprovoked by the rabid beast

But the smile the chipmunk brought me sufficed
A do trudge by on my way
Leaving the chipmunk to basque
In his feelings of superiority
As he believes to know me so well

Further on a squirrel scavenges the underbrush
And his seeing me is met with more energy
He scurries along the opposite side of a nearby tree
Hidden from my sight as he climbs
I pause and wait quietly
Until I catch his cautious peeking
And hear him dart further up the back end bark
As he goes into squirrel red alert.

The frog pool sits still now
All the tiny fish are gone
And my hope is for the frogs to be buried
Deep down within the mud
But worry strikes for their safety
As one frog corpse lays white upon the bottom
Ghostly under the cold ripples

On into the woods again
Heading home without the summer floral perfume
It is now replaced by falls earthiness
The smell of leaves transforming into soil
Slowly becoming mulch
Fertilizing for next years growth

And back to my steps
Warm in my fleece
With hands emerging from the warmth of sleeves
I head back into my own
Greeted by the furnace cutting in
Smiling once again
At my encounter
With the lazy chipmunk