CURTIS BAUER
A young maple looses
Its leaves before the season changes.
The sky remains
Blue and the cornfields
Are mute as I drive
To work, but I’m not sure if I
Am driving or if I am sitting
Still and the Iowa
Landscape passes by. Maybe
It was yesterday, or
Twenty years ago: the sun is coming
Up and I am the fat kid
Stopped for traffic on Welsh Street; the maple
Leaves hold the growing light then
Drop it onto the chrome handlebars
Between my hands. Maybe I am
Thinking of the song on WMT I heard
While eating breakfast, or the dead
Crickets blowing
In circles on the porch. Say
I was that fat kid,
I had a porch with dead crickets,
And a song in my head
While I waited for traffic, and
This morning I am in a car
On my way to work and I see
That boy waiting
For me to drive by so
He can peddle down North Street
To the edge of town.
It’s pointless
To tell him twenty years will pass
Before he realizes
The maple leaf holds the secret of light,
That the dead return as
The sound of blowing crickets;
It’s pointless to tell him that distance
Is silence at the edge of town,
That the seasons changing will never have
Anything to do with him.
©All rights reserved. Reproduction of material
without written
permission from Inkwell is strictly prohibited.
INKWELL
Magazine
Manhattanville College
2900 Purchase Street
Purchase, NY 10577
Phone: 914-323-7239
Email: inkwell@mville.edu