I close my eyes,
while walking,
remembering

"To Autumn" by Keats

and how it feels to crush an acorn under my heels
and how it feels to pluck a red leaf off an oak tree

and how it felt to be young
and how it felt to be young

and how that every memory is shrouded in fog
and how every recalling warps their accuracy
and how it felt to be an unwanted outsider

and how after I was wanted, after some some summer, heat faded, I came

it was marked, everything changed, because I chose to be different and difficult,
and that was better, like the dry leaves, it is delicate, crunching easily underfoot
spidery veins all brown and beautiful, thin and papery, but it is interesting, and

red, and orange, and purple, and leaves sweep up in the pull of the breeze and

I have never truly believed in God, but I have always believed in the wind

I felt it on the nape of my neck in my youth it held me
by the scruff, but with age it was covered and my own
and my hair grows long, brown, tumultuous, tangled,

it is my trace, billowing, behind me as I walk, steadily
facing the against wind, neither breathing nor praying

because the wind in my face, swaying
filling me with smells of earthy decay
as the machine of leaves crumble, that

is more beautiful than all
and the ending of this is
all my beginning