Turn to October

Flip the pages on three calendars. Change my razor, open new toothpaste, clean up computer desktop. Re-commit to oatmeal every breakfast and no sugar this month. Get ready to finally do my taxes. Using the first day of October to keep the Adult Responsibility Show running smoothly.

 

Is that all there is? Somewhere buried in a pile of leaves I didn’t rake (no deciduous trees in San Francisco), I hear the small voice of the child I once was who has never wholly disappeared. I remember a poem I wrote some ten years ago and found it. Reminding me that when all the tax numbers are finally lined up, I need to get out into the park and look for a tree that might shed a leaf. And catch it. 

Happy October.

 

                            Today I caught a falling leaf

                                   and crossed a bridge to my childhood,

                                        where my friends and I spent hours spinning joyfully

                                     in open fields chasing the spiraling leaves, until 

                                                    dizzy with whirling, we collapsed 

                                                                on the damp, musty earth, laughing

                                     and then lay silently in leaf-caught bliss gazing

                                            into October sky.  

 

                            Now my days are so calculated,

                            Punched onto computer clocks,

                            Time spent lining up and knocking down e-mails

                            like obedient toy soldiers.

                            No sudden gusts of wind to send me diving,

                            No curve or crunch or carefree collapse.

 

                            But today I caught a falling leaf.