A Japanese maple on some obscure corner in any city planted twenty years ago sheds leaves of underneath pink that enamor the passerby in autumn. The leaves fall like waves, every few seconds a wake of growth departs from the place and drifts to the sullen ground as a soft cover of emotion. Just a color, turning in the wind. Making only a sound when footsteps draw by crunch crumple. Orchestra echos resonate the just footsteps and the wind accompanies a flotsam of lost opportunity. Which really is only a soft sound, one we never heard.

Implore a memory to surface amongst the file cabinet of experience and you might encounter it or a zen of realization that what you remember in a fragmented mosaic of what you wanted to remember. I didn’t say so, but I cried for you all the way through the barn.

If only my footsteps made a sound every body else could hear.

Echos only happen in caves and cathedrals, a sound we wait to hear we made. Proves our existence, our voice, but the only folk that remembers or recalls is our self. Our. Our own, our future, our place, our time. Our friends and lovers are already somebody else.

Somebody not us.

The canoe that done sunk.

My place flows. You might not be able to hear it unless you go outside after dark, when everybody else is asleep dreaming. Meditate. Be the leaf and stop when it lands for exclamation! Make another sound and don’t let it be a sigh or yawn.

I feel like the sounds we don’t make in between. Silence. Peace. When the wind stops. The hush before a breath and the moment after, when everything is let out. Sucking air between tears.

That’s how I feel. Ever feel this way? I’d wish you a deeper well if I could.

Tonight, my footsteps made a rumble, a kind that wakes you up form the panache velvet chair. Just a rumble to woe your senses like the story of a dead dog in the road. I didn’t expect it. Instead, I just took it in stride of my crippled gait. I wanted it to be smooth but it wasn’t just like the rest of my life and words. I wanted it. Want is such a cliche, I’d rather have. My footsteps with the wind don’t make that sound though. The sound they make is a natural one I don’t understand. Synchronicity. Blossoming like an already bloomed three times dandelion is all it is.