everything changes

E N D   O F   A U T U M N

I have seen for some time now
the change in everything.
Something arises and acts
and kills and brings suffering.

In the gardens now from day to day
is a change from green
to yellow and gray,
a slow dying-away:
how long my road has been.

Now I stand in this emptiness
and look down on the rows of trees.
Almost to the distant sea
the foreboding earnestness
of the sky lies heavily.

–Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated from the German by C. F. MacIntyre

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It has been Poetry Wednesday all day, but I have been off-balance all week. The thin slice in pie-chart of my brain where Poetry Wednesday resides has been taken up with other mysteries—mostly social & business in nature—but not excluding a reoccurring dream in which I am given a new (and lovely) item of clothing only to find it is not finished, its collar is held on with straight pins or the hems left raw and unevenly cut. I believe I've had this same dream three nights in a row now, and a few times last week too.

It is cold, finally. A heavy blanket of fat gold maple and fluted ginko leaves covers the sidewalks in the morning, as if they fell overnight in a rush to protect the ground from coming snow. Gloves and hats, now necessary, are jammed in pockets and backpacks as the walks to school in cold weather commence. My son's kindergarten teacher left for Finland at the beginning of the month, where she plans to marry and then live. I liked her, but her sudden leaving hasn't gone down that well with my son. Or anyone, for that matter. Tomorrow there are parent-teacher conferences without a teacher; things limp by in their in-between way. I don't like in-betweens any better than my son. He came home today complaining that his stomach aches because school is too loud; before bed he told me he is worried about how everyone is going to stay on our planet when it's round.

Everything changes. And life is full of the in-between places, hobbling off-balance until you get two shoes back on. Genevieve needs two simple surgeries. Ike needs a new teacher. I am good, though, because I finally got our internet working properly and some of my more pressing technology issues sorted out.

And I'm going to bed now where I'll dream about a rust velveteen cloak with a hood basted on, or a lovely navy double-crepe dress with side seams unsewn.