My neighborhood sits on the slope of a hill adorned by 

oaks, arches of autumn flurrying red and gold when 

pumpkin season arrives. It has not yet come but

the leaves outside are beginning to curl crisp and brown.

 

Sometimes I like to collapse infinity 

into a single point in time I label “now.” 

Pretend that nothing ever existed until this moment, this “now”

& that it will all cease to exist in a breath. That the fragile globe is a 

swiveling top teetering on one point before tipping over

and in this “now” the trees look

 

oh-so-green. Oh-so-green. Greener than anything

I’ve known to exist so I memorize the chill 

of pre-pumpkin-season and the exact shade of lime

that dots my forest of Arden. Memorize the iciness of

autumn in my throat so that one day I can breathe it 

onto my children. Kiss them with the mellowness of fall,

 

and so I take it all in. Just in case. For

I don’t know when it will burn.