Fall

The air

thick with vapor and cool,

hangs its heavy curtain

of grey afternoon.

In the misty distance

a dog barks and

someone drops an iron something,

a tire iron or a tossed-down summer tool.

The sound of it

wrangles through dense mist,

strangely louder than was summer's lawny din.

Now its time again for refuge

from boney cold, to hearthy den

and bookish cerebral explorations

of the mind and soul, because

summer striving is spent.

The world gathers up its harvest

of gold and crimson profundity

in foggy shrouds of reflective glory.

Across the creek

a burly squirrel stirs

crisp oak leaves,

and the earth

nips off another season of gone green,

drops it down, brown upon the ground.

Next block over

a child yelps some cacophony

of late afternoon frivolity,

and mama calls.

I will go home now, for I remember this.

Glass Chimera