Ed Harkness
	One Less Fall From here you can smell the age of the year in the air, its odor of decay, the river sheen a slurry of cottonwood and pine, hill and sky. Grass has gone tan on Clemens Ridge, that slope we always meant to climb to take in the wider view. Kingfisher, you say, your favorite, chittering upstream, then down, like we do on our walks, together and alone. It gets harder, though, to see the end of earth tones, to face the empty face of what’s to come, where now we’re borne on the river’s clatter at this low water time. You say the boulders look like bones in the current. Only this late do they emerge exposed like black eggs, hidden more often than not, as some thoughts are, the ones that lie in the deeper channels. All the summer warblers have moved on: grosbeak, tanager, siskin—gone. The land prepares for hard freezes, then snow, then a season of pallid light. One less fall. Now, though, afternoon sun reveals more of what we love. A gust of wind scatters the last papery aspen leaves in a swirl of joy. Some sail all the way across to Old River Road. Those that light on the river will travel far.