Shoulders and Leaves

Neck muscles ache from the grip

of little legs, knees that tense

with each new glimpse of a glowing

autumn world. You throw wide

your arm and point a pudgy finger

at two girls who toss
a big red ball over still-green grass,

your lips babbling syllables of delight

in a language I once knew.

Solemnly you stare down a fierce-

eyed husky, head tilted as his

with the weight of quiet questions.

You laugh at the sudden hiss

of a tattered tabby cat

arched in bristly orange and white.

High in the oak tree overhead

a red squirrel leaps from branch to branch,

and you return the tree limbs' waving,

while all around us leaves of red and gold

drift downward to the road, falling,

tumbling, rustling through the silence,

slipped from their moorings, softly
as the days unnoticed, one by one,
released by the wind's incessant pull.

David J. Bauman © 2005