Walking up the hill towards my car this evening, I found myself noticing the smell of fallen leaves, which yanked me out of a brief internal discussion. At that juncture I found myself unable to return to the internal dialog, while at the same time unable to re-acquire the smell of the leaves that were at once so heady, By the time I reached my car and placed my belongings on the front seat, I could no longer resist the urge to put pen to paper,
So I stood there in the semi-dark, with the parking lot lights giving almost but not quite enough light to see what I was doing and at some point I had to give in to the faith that I could write in spite of the funky orange lighted shade. So here it is.
It is that first flash of realization
The smell of fallen leaves
The thin sliver of the moon
The sudden knowing that the leaves have turned
The color of Fall leaves around the bend
With the first touch of sunlight
It is bread baking
The first taste of something indescribably wonderful
It is the experience that if you try to recreate it,
That you try to grasp and hold onto
You cannot
It is the magic of gently brushing
Lips against an ear by accident
In passing
It is all of these and yet none of these
For it has already happened
And will never be the same
Or happen in quite the same way
Like the impromptu flowing forth
From a pen on paper that you can barely see
Trusting that the words will end up
Where they need to be
It is that need, that urgency
And closet fears of losing thoughts
That bring these words to me
Upon my notebook in an emote parking lot.
Linthicum, MD, November 2009