Carmen K. Sisson

As days grow shorter, my memory lengthens, carrying me back to my youth. Crisp autumn mornings, dawn barely a suggestion, grandpa’s hand tousling my hair, reminding me the fish are waking, and I should be as well.

Gone are the sticky, sultry-slick days of white-hot heat. Even the martins can feel it as they wait in the gathering dusk, cock their heads toward the wind and listen for the call. A cool breeze sends them spinning on their perch and they struggle a moment then give way to flight — glorious flight — black dots in the star-heavy sky.

Today, empty warehouses dot the landscape beside the trestle, a testimony to the city’s early years as a booming purveyor of cotton. Softly, the winter sun steals across clumps of goldenrod, outlines the trestle’s wood and steel frame and hints at another existence.