The First Day of Fall

I moved today 

Again

Into a new house 

In a new town

Like a new chapter

From here

I can hear a train whistling down some not so far away and not so close tracks.

I’ve never noticed the train here. 

And it’s funny, to me, as I wipe away 100 years of dust from this house that has stood here for 4 lifetimes, that I have never stayed in one place for more that a mere second. That I always manage to accumulate baggage, even though I know how heavy it is, when I, inevitably, pack it all up again in 10 months. Barely a year. Barely a life time. I am so young and tired. There is a kind of fatigue from always trying to find home in the room you happen to be in. Hello walls. Hello, same stars and new street lights. And goodbye, to the old new familiar things, like the goats in the backyard and the paragliders over the mountain tops....

It always feels significant

That first night

No matter how many new firsts I have

I love the heartbreak of leaving one home

To find another. 

It always hurts 

And no matter how sure you are that the space you carved out meant something

Like dough, it closes in around the space that once held you,

When you move through to the next place. 

This morning, my sister said to me,

Think of all the leaves falling that only you and I have seen. And it was true. I could feel it stinging in the back of my eyes. 

She told me once, when I was still close enough to the ground to look up at the sky, that if you catch a leaf as it falls out of the tree, you get a wish, because you are the very first thing to touch that leaf other than it’s own tree, 

or maybe some butterflies and birds. 

It grew out of itself in the sunshine and rain, and now, at the very last moment of its life, there you are to wish it goodbye.

I suppose I am no stranger to autumn, she is like a friend who always stays just a little to long, and never quite lives up to the promises she makes. She tricks me, her orangeness and promise of rain, every time.

I am always glad to see her, just the same.