Today is the fifth of October.
Five Octobers ago, it was 2000…
I remember a particularly wonderful fall day with R in north Georgia, at Amicalola Falls State Park, a pumpkin farm, and even a little shopping at an outlet mall. Hey, I am not too granola (there’s that word again) to say that the Williams Sonoma outlet does autumn quite well—spicy candles, cider mulling on the demonstration stove, an enticing display of seasonal cookbooks. It was a sweet day and became something of a tradition for a few years.

I.
once my tongue made friends with it,
delighted at the onomatopoeia,
i had to let it tumble, carelessly,
out of my mouth
with each step up wide wooden planks:
amicalola, a-mi-ca-lo-la.

here are excited sprays,
swirling, bubbling toward the inevitable
(except those drops taking flight,
flinging themselves toward cheeks and hands);

here is water stroking green-bearded stones,
lost in murmuring thought;

here is liquid glass, gliding, perfect,
thick over wrinkled black rocks.

at the top of the falls
there is no sound,
just mountains cascading into a horizon
of blue, except for a smudge of grey:
the city to which we will return.

II.
I clutch a limp paper bag
of boiled peanuts, steaming, salty and strange,
as I walk through the browning field.
there is a sweet dignity to the pumpkins,
squatting like rumpled old crones,
children scrambling onto their laps,
smitten parents trailing behind with cameras.
we have no camera, but it doesn’t matter,
for we have no children either,
not even the beginnings of one,
no seed of an idea, no pepita,
no kernel of blue Indian corn,
just the two of us, our baskets crammed with
knobby, misshapen gourds
to adorn our quiet table for two.

III.
later, we buy a heavy soup pot,
hoist it into the trunk,
and drive back to the grey smudge.
countless times will we lift its clattering lid
to reveal its own bubbling waters,
its own salty steam;
countless times will it adorn our table for two,
three,
four.