Taking Leave in Late Autumn
Tim Hawkins

This is the season of rain and muffled footsteps
that made so little difference.
 
This is the season of late arrivals in the early dusk
and early departures in the cold, moonlit hours.
 
This is the season of moving away
through the wind and the damp chill,
 
caught unaware by an epic backdrop looming
in a late November sky.
 
In hindsight, of course, we may call these days
by any name we choose.
 
But for now we stumble, breathless and numb,
feverish and clad for milder seasons,
 
invoking this “we” as if guiding a tour
through a city thronged with kindly upturned faces,
 
embarking on yet another evening on endless streets
of smoke and fog and dutiful rain,
 
past shop displays of dazzling goods
laid out to serve some puzzling, higher purpose,
 
past houses filled with glittering laughter
and doormen alert with warning eyes,
 
through vast and windswept
interior landscapes,
 
here in the last, dim light
after the sun has paled.
 
I can’t say for sure that the cold                    
this year is unseasonable
or that we are lost,                                                                 
  
but these wet leaves and cobblestones                                 
may have more to do than we know
 
with where we are going                                                                    
and what we might have been.