The First Day

Sept 18 2018

The first day

the buses return

from wherever it is they summer,

nesting

in neatly ordered rows

in some sprawling far-off lot.

They materialize in the fall

as if conjured out of air,

flocking in the schoolyard, then busily dispersing

like gawky yellow birds

migrating home.

The day you notice

the first leaf has turned,

when the air's cool crisp edge

has quickened your gait

and refreshed a listless world.

When the waves of heat have stilled

and the humidity has cleared,

and the blue, looking up

is so luminous and pure

it's as if colour could have substance

and a pleasure dome covers the earth.

The day the pumpkins appear

in enormous cardboard crates,

overflowing

by the supermarket doors.

A cornucopia

of bright orange gourds,

corrugated spheres, facing blankly out

like jostling eager neophytes

waiting to be formed.

And then, a few weeks hence

the slumping flesh

of orphans left

in the dumpster in the rear.

The succession of seasons,

and the comfort we take

in the order of things;

from grass to leaves to snow,

rites of passage, rituals

accustomed milestones.

The cycling of season-to-season

and then year after year repeating;

so much faster, it seems

as we get older, and slower, and jaded

and others take our place.

The porcelain skies

we lay on our backs and watched

exhilarated by our smallness,

the buses we rode, and pumpkins carved

'til we outgrew ourselves.

With a weary sigh

at the passage of time

and the bittersweet ache of loss.