Found Writing in Large Satchel of Papers

Last night I stumbled through the raked, but not yet taken away maple leaves and so when I rolled my bike through them, there was a sodden crunch to the journey. I love Autumn, with all its inconveniences. As I stand out on the back porch drinking a cup of homegrown herbal tea after my long ride, I hear the last of the geese overhead flying south away from our harsh winter.

I imagine them standing on the steps of Mayan temples and chanting the prayers of summer through their beaks. I imagine them making long string of feathers in the channels of water that wind through jungles and each feather is etched with the name of a minor god who speaks the name of the One God with pleasure and delight.

All this comes onto the backsides of my eyelids as I listen to the wind blow through the maples, as if they were strange reeds in those waterways. And I too listen with pleasure and delight, as if there will never be another thing to do. And right now, there is nothing else to do when the darkness falls and the star-pricked night is a blanket we cover ourselves up with.

For there is no denying it is Autumn and it is too cold to do anything in the evenings after the clocks change except lie under that blanket and find new ways to fashion love, new ways to braid our hair together like a Chinese puzzle we cannot escape from until Spring opens up her head crocus-style, fortune-cookie style and gives us a little hallelujah of sunshine.