A Day Like Any Other

I rode my bike along the cycle path that parallels the Thames. I can't see it, but it's there as I ride through the mist hogging the river. The geese signal my passing in the morning and I can hear the river in various places sometimes as I ride. The river is still lower than it should be, but that's bad river authority management. Heaven help us if the state takes it over. I'm in no hurry, and stop in the early mist to listen and see; the atmosphere changes in pockets of density where the cloud cover moves, thins, thickens and then leaf density and colours shift in range. The berries hang in clusters of red, of crimsoned jewels I knew a few weeks back to be green buds yet to form bright white flowers. Leaf fall has been more a shedding of excess for survival this year; our unusual heat of a long summer cyclically passes through every half century or so, reminiscent of my Texas summers long ago. Was it really 2008 when I endured forty straight days when the heat never dropped below…