COUNTING LEAVES

COUNTING LEAVES

Mornings wake up with a start here.
From where I find myself brushing up
on counting in Chinese, I sip my tea
as often as a leaf falls, (no abacus handy).
A bright swath of cerulean sky revs up
a quick day—the scurrying of lorries
can only mean winter’s stocking is here.

Happens everytime. Mourning at high
noon, 9/11 families roar back home
to take up where they left off: Cut wood
for fireplaces, jar jam for the fall, clean
the heater filters, deliver the ripened
fruit to the food terminal, take the train
to the bursting schools, harangue nerds
to mind the socio-political situation,
lash out at rabid pols and sleepy solons
to pass an unemployment solution,
maybe consider filing the divorce papers.

A constipatedly harrassed truck driver
squeezes an impolite blare from his horn,
yells murder at school bus drivers doing
sixty, sticks his lizard-like tongue at kids
chanting back: Up yours, up yours! Gay!
Highways shape the taxpayer’s day.
Move on. Move on. Earn an American dream.

I sip my tea with a hint of a shrug, welcome
to the littered porch a yellow leaf landing
with a soft click. The brown one awaits its
turn as the twentieth, except I can’t count
that far in Chinese yet. Aieee…ya! Ni hao.

—Albert B. Casuga
09-13-11

Prompt: As so often in fall, a clear morning sky means not clarity but inversion—the bellowing of trucks. A yellow leaf lands with a soft click.--- Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 09-13-11