Autumn brings New York
a strange light.
It’s as if the sun is looking down upon the city
from the side,
as if we’re losing its favor somehow,
receiving a half-light instead,
all our sins coming due,
it is so beautiful.
There’s an American Elm close to seventh street
in Tompkins Square Park.
It has an ugly slant to its branches.
One side is proper and full,
the other, lobbed off either by saw or storm.
If it were a man,
his left arm would be cut off from his neck
to the middle of his ribs,
I had never noticed.
It’s the end of October and half its leaves have left,
bright and magical leaves that glow in your hand
like melting gold.
All day I’ve sat and watched the leaves fall,
gold rain on golden puddles,
children kicking them as they pass,
the smell bringing me back to the two Ash trees that would
litter our front yard with brown and red crisps,
all without being prompted by any cold changing cool,
simply shedding them because it was time;
never have I been so content.
This is my first true autumn in twenty-sevens years
and I’m glad.
Glad to see change come to this park,
glad for something new,
glad that age colors,
making death even beautiful
sometimes.
To think me an ambassador of the King
still fills me with disbelief.
To think that I’ve been made to win Him glory,
to win it by shedding my golden sin
more and more
until,
naked and shivering,
He coats me with a layer of snow
and awe
for all the world to see;
I am still learning.
I’m still learning to see the world as it should be,
to see it how it’ll one day become,
after the leaves are gone and the winter,
after the new buds break forth and we can all once again
rejoice. Rejoice that spring is here and that all things are new.
Not long ago, I would’ve seen the sitting away
of a day
to be such a waste.
I’m glad those days behind me now,
never to return.
(BA)
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