home from work eastbound on the elevated Mancunian Way a black van with black windows harassed me. In the outside lane of busy traffic I drifted past slower vehicles watching for my exit. From the rear I saw a black van jinking between lanes, undertaking and overtaking until it was so close the wasp insignia on its bonnet filled my mirror and I thought, hmmm. Cool was my name calm was my disposition as I mooched at 40mph toward the exit. Waspy van meanwhile exuded irritation, bobbing a bit this way drifting a bit that way, not easy in the two eastward lanes that trapped us both. Seeing a space I moved to let it pass and once alongside its passenger window descended showing the driver to be a huge wasp giving me the V. Such rudeness.
"Fuck you too wasp!' I shouted "And it's autumn, not much time remaining for your kind. Yeah!"
But she was gone.
Whilst descending from the M way I noticed a squirrel truck pass in the opposite direction loaded with acorns. The driver seemed exhausted and smiled weakly, at least I thought it was a smile but it might have been a grimace because with squirrels it's sometimes hard to gauge. Recently I gave wide berth to a squirrel whose grimace reminded me of Humphrey Bogart, he was sipping bourbon from an acorn cup in Crowcroft Park. Later beneath his home tree I declaimed Ode to Autumn by John Keats hoping it might raise a cheer but on verse two he hiccuped out of his hole and told me to fuck off.
So for the rest of you
Ode to Autumn, by John Keats.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
