I travel back in time again.
The roads are soft, my heels dig in,
Traffic ebbs and flows with the wind,
and I am buffeted. The leaf
drifts down from the tree like any
one Robin or Grackle would do,
making its own shade to land in.
Eventually the bird will fly
the other way. The leaf nestles
into the blade of grass. One car
after another pauses, drivers
offering rides through half-opened
windows. As if I were going
nowhere worth going to. As if
the leaf could spread its wings and fly
up like a butterfly into
the sky. Part of me still wants to
walk down that back country highway,
but there’s the leaf, settling in.
