Remember Autumns when you could
drive the rural roads to
Rutherford VT or Albany, NY
to catch the colors?
Like clock work.
Columbus Day weekend was a good bet.
Set your watch by it.
Drive up to the Berkshires
or the Adirondacks, maybe.
See the mountains turn from
varying shades of greens
to mounds of Kicks Cereal,
inverted bowls of
yellows, rusts, reds,orange.
But lately, Nature’s running
on a strange clock:
green leaves fall in autumn;
brown leaves lie on top of,
not below the snow.
The ticking’s skewed.
Mothers rigorous schedule
is blown about by ill winds.
And what are we to do
whose lives run on iron tracks,
whose on time arrivals at
the next station are
engraved in stone?
Why carry a time piece when
this hour might be more or less
than sixty minutes?
If all is relativity,
what of integrity?
If all dissolves,
fear when heavy rains fall.
Fear when green leaves fall.