13 Nov 14,
Dad’s 95th birthday. Flakes randomly fall and drift between the pin oak’s remaining leaves. That orange-red’s a muted contrast against the overcast sky. Gray lake effect, the white stag has edged out of the Arctic. The weathermen labeled it another polar vortex. My dad once said that it always snows on his birthday. Every November 13th, the time–an open man-made season that preys on rutting deer–when multiple gunshots echo across the river, through distant fields, and out of the woods behind my house. The early morning salvo’s a celebration only because it’s a hello from a deer hunter, a contemporary affirmation, His words written in snow as silent as the decades and Cernunnos, the Horned God of the Hunt, once a Lord in the Forest.