Look Out For What’s Below

I walked tonight in the misty rain.
Down to the lookout park where no one else was.
In the still night you could hear everything amplified.
The train on the tracks below.
The raindrops on the bushes down the hillside.
I heard the lonesome bark of a harbor seal.
Then the ruckus of many and a big splash in the Sound.
Under the low clouds
I smelled Christmas candles .
Except it was the real November smell that Christmas candles imitate
I only know it by the manufactured memory.

I walked this afternoon over a carpet of bright red maple leaves.
Small and several layers thick on the sidewalk.
In the gray light they were brilliant but I didn’t notice.
Until the moment I heard Good Morning
Called to me by an old lady hunched over a rolling metal grocery cart.
She was so tiny and her voice was so small
and I was moving so fast and angrily
that the sound almost passed me by.
But it did not and I froze just for a moment
To hear it and call back, Good Morning!
And there suddenly were the leaves beneath my feet
bright and wonderful.