Words, like leaves
form within,
then emerge to blow in the wind
or to rattle.
Fall in the Northeast means leaves: coloring on branches, falling to the ground, mounding around my feet. Leaves of many shapes, colors, sizes. Fresh and pretty leaves and desiccated brown ones. They are everywhere in our hardwood region, in the cities, fields and forests.
Leaf season is big business, with tourists and locals driving about to view paintbox vistas. Soon after comes the constant growling of leaf blowers, as landscaping companies send out their fleets to remove the now brown and crinkled remnants of oak and maple glory.
My eye is drawn to airborne leaves that fall from the sky like a message, sometimes in singles, often in clusters, when a gust of wind sends a myriad cascading all at once. They curl around the doorways, lining the entryways of my house like so many sleeping dogs, and crunch under foot when I go for the mail. They will not be ignored.
Nor will the words floating about and rattling in columns this campaign season be ignored. Words are as cheap and abundant as leaves. Large important words, colorful words, dry brittle words. Leathery tough words of beauty, distorted words of ill intent. Shriveling words that sour my gut and sassy, sailing, words that invite me, just for a moment, to ride the wind.
This is a dazzling season of colorful leaves and energetic campaigns. Orange, yellow and red, under blue October sky. Red white and blue, backdrop of words. Of accusation and rebuttal, claims and defense. Of promise and of threat. Blowing, blowing around my head, they do not cease at nightfall, as the leaf blowers do, but lodge in my consciousness and haunt my sleep. I can only dream of dark, still, nights of quiet, the merciful white numbing of winter.
