Margen
Autumn doesn't say goodbye to the leaves: it lets them go the way you let a habit go.
There is a brief gold in the plane trees of the park, a gold no bank will keep for you, that trades for three weeks only and then goes bust on the wet ground.
I like this month that promises nothing: neither April's ambitious green nor winter's solemn white.
October is honest. It tells you: look, everything falls, even what you loved, even you; and still the air smells of woodsmoke and of split apples, and it is good to be cold so as to have, later, the excuse of drawing close to something warm.
I add up what I have lost this year and I get a number the wind carries off before I have finished the sum.