Autumn

 

Spring forward, fall back. One hour. Rule of thumb. Autumn, typically, is indifferent to these time signatures. Sunrise is cooler, too cool most chances. Yellow leaves no larger than (thinks cent coins, cuticles no fingernails) hmmmmm speckle concrete footpaths. Cute icicles. Rain leaves them brighter awhile, softening. Bodies rest into the slowdown of heat, enjoy the enjoining beatitude. Puddles inch inwards to an outline. Streetscapes turn amber, burgundy, lime. Coughs in the air occur, distant phrases of tired machinery. Metal pings when hit, assorted wheels grind iron rail grooves. Impressively the omnipresent clouds are this time dark grey, bodying reminder of our world of bodies, boding more and darker. Autumn, prolifically, let’s go of the foregoing immensities, their spatial expansions, their aging colours, as usual. Walking around the wind, or headlong against the wind, but not ahead of the wind, walkers have never felt so alive. Or so they say. Utensils shine dull silver quietly, there in the moment. And buildings and clouds, likewise. Immensities of park and field, evaporation and photosynthesis, sun ray and creek bed are let go. One hour, no more, no less, let go. Jigsaw suburbs fit into jigsaw city and jigsaw outskirts, every piece touched with change, strange joins. Storm drains thunder after downpours lessen. Autumn prolifically sounds. Next day the regularities push their known designs, regardless of saving hours. Stone is washed of sunlight dust, revealing its hidden warmth, worn well. Fennel rallies and fountains, weeds find a place to stay, vines reach their magnitude and start to fray. Explorative, pages are turned that have not been turned for years and yes, years. Birds scatter raindrops on pages from upper branches, firm in their tendencies. Houses in line resume their human scale as the cool air shrinks expectations back to normality. Absurd ringtones interrupt tranquillity. Fallen eucalypts from the big storm have turned brown on brown where fallen. A lightbulb at a day window says someone is home. Succulents too big to manage loll over rocks in tired profusion. Laughing conversation picks up on a favourite theme as it fades around a nearby corner. A construction site is a nest of cranes in a field of mud, angles waiting for the next stage. Lucid thoughts join together again in some old-fashioned way. A moment of your time becomes an hour, more or less, attention rapt in the flow. A feather, no less, falls on the footpath, reminder of soft arrows everywhere, of all the time it actually takes. Tomorrow, which is already here, witnesses more than it can say or fit in the space. Instead, erects signs to confirm where it’s at. Wall cracks held with cement retell the sag of ground in redbrick zigzag, all the way down, to the ground, nearly. The red tree in the side garden barely flutters.