Henry Powderly

So here’s the next batch of fall photos I’ve taken this season, which, on the Northeast has been generally mild. For that, I am not complaining. Anything that keeps the cold away.

This group comes from the middle period of the season, when the leaves left on the trees were bright yellow and red and the leaves that had already fallen had not yet dried and turned brown.

It was during that time that my daughter had her first Halloween. Also, I got to pick my own cabernet franc grapes in the North Fork of Long Island for wine that I’m helping to make.

As I’ve said, most of the trees on my property turn yellow, so the whole yard shone gold in the middle of fall. It’s been beautiful.

Enjoy the photos.

He’d never run that fast before, though it felt like his legs, as if re-entering the atmosphere, were falling apart, tearing muscle with every step, wrenching his heels, shattering bone.

A hundred times before he’d gone for a midnight walk through the woods, along the river just a mile outside of town.

He’d been looking at the eyelash moon when thought the rustle in the leaf bed was a raccoon or even a skunk. When he turned to look the man jumped out from the trees grabbed him, pinching the skin on the boy’s back.

His guts fell, his heart rolled downhill in his chest. His breath stopped as he wrestled with the heavy shadow that grabbed at his face and dug its alien fingers into his eye sockets.

Then the boy, unable to swallow, tight as a piano string, flung his elbow and it broke on his attacker’s skull.

He kicked free and ran, sucking shallow breaths. The thin, quick exhales trembled under his drum-roll heartbeat.

The blur of black leaves slapped his face as he weaved through the trees. Until, along the river bank, his back tensed and he tripped on the tamped earth path and smashed his shoulder on a tree.

The pain, the fear, panic. Though his shoulder throbbed, and he could hardly lift his arm, he tried to get up. But the pain in his back was too much, and his heart shook faster and faster.

He reached behind and felt that he’d been stabbed, then he lost his breath and his stomach disappeared.

He reached inside his sweatshirt pocket, but his cellphone was gone. The woods were silent except for the faint hum of the river current and the far away traffic on Main Street.

Oh God. His parents, they’d find his room empty. They’d be lost, his mother, his kid brother. Would Sara cry? What did he mean to her? What would happen?

He’d never know college, or marriage, or see his parents as grandparents.

He can’t, he can’t.

He coughed and tried to crawl, but his legs had gone numb.

Would they find him, would they find the man? Could he survive?

And when it felt like his heart couldn’t beat any faster it began to slow down.

While I have held back on the photo posts recently, trying to get more writing done than photo taking, I have plenty of photos I’ve taken this fall that I’d love to share.

So here’s the first batch, taken right when the leaves started to fall off of the trees. These are a lot of the same tress and bushes I photographed in the summer, like the hosta, which has lost its flowers and turned yellow, and the hydrangeas that have left behind brown, dried shells of flowers.

Of course, it’s the up close colors and patterns of the leaves that inspire me the most.

Enjoy the photos. And, as always, you’re welcome to download any of them you would like. I’m not good enough a photographer to be stingy with my pics.

I have hardly a reason for saying this, as it’s mostly nonsense, a maimed man’s attempt to make sense of things, but I see no reason to serve rice in round bowls.

Had it been a plate, I’d be able to close my hand right now.

I knew they were bad, that gaggle of frat morons, that pack of turds. There should have been a sign above the entrance that read, “Hot sake is not a jello shot.” Or at least, “No class, no service.”

When Ben arrived at the hibachi table the meatheads were hammered, and they screamed “Bonzai” as he unpacked his sauces, squirted oil on the hot steel cooktop, tossed his knives in the air – a shtick samurai – and diced onions like Art Blakey on a drum break.

It was a normal part of the show, when after dishing out the rice in twelve equal portions, in twelve round bowls, he lined up a few onion pieces to fling at the diners’ mouths. The gimmick was simple, wholesome fun, meant to help people to drop their guards and laugh at life as they opened their mouths and tried to catch the flying onions on their tongues.

But then Ben hit one of the idiots in the eye, and after maybe twenty seconds of “fucks” and “assholes” – Ben apologizing, of course – one of the morons grabbed the rice and tossed it at the chef.

The sick cackle that followed makes me wretch to think about. That such cognizant manure exists is our fault, my fault.

And the group took turns pelting Ben with hibachi rice, as people stood up, yelled or silently left.

As manager, I should have been more civil, called the cops, escorted Ben to the kitchen and calmly asked the rioters to leave. But civil would have them win, those fools who throw rice.

I was tossed over the table. My hand landed on a round bowl that flipped when I put my weight on it, so my flesh slid onto the steel.

And the burn was awful.

I’ve been holding on to these photos.

Back in the summer, one rainy day I noticed as I was walking my dogs that the wood grain in the Adirondack chairs on my back patio looked like fish scales. And while when they were dry the chairs were gray, when wet the green moss in the cracks and hidden brown in the wood stood out.

I also took a few photos of a wet sawhorse I had used a few times to hold bed frames as I spray painted them white. With the wet grain and speckles of white paint, the texture in the photos was wonderful. I also photographed one of the rusty wing nuts holding the sawhorse together.

I do love to snap pictures of patterns, and love it when the results look almost like an abstract painting.

These were a batch of really good ones.

Enjoy.

It was a retail sleight of hand he never could master, the “Ma’am, I think you need a larger size” sale. Because a muffin top is flattering. Two waists are better than one.

He often imagined how he would look with a fluffy flesh ring spilling over his jeans. He even thought he’d tattoo tire treads on the overhang, for a laugh. He’d already tattooed an eyeball to the back of his head. Most of the year, he kept it hidden under his hair. But once a year he’d shave his head, letting the reverse cyclops out from behind the curtain, for a few laughs. If the retailer’s district manager ever saw it he’d probably lose his job, but that annual risk was what got him through another year peddling fickle fashions to teens and tourists.

Shit, he’d donate his brain to the CEO if it meant he could forget the workday as soon as it ended.

He’d been to three last-day happy hours in the past month, playing the lucky one because he got to buy the drinks. If it was his party he’d order the best Scotch in the place and chase it with a strawberry daiquiri. But it would never happen, he was the Zen master of sweater folding.

She claimed he was ignoring her, which was true. Then she asked for a medium.

“Your great granny thinks you’d better take the large.”