Today on a September wind

This is it. This is the day I remember from somewhere. The wind is too familiar, the air too perfect. Voices run through it, places, old love, old music. Today a miracle happens outside. Overhead, just above the people walking. The way the light touches down lightly before moving on, softening. The way the wind touches. A voice somewhere speaks. To me? An old voice in me churned up by this certain change, this weather. Today is the first day of cold to come. How do we show gratitude upon the arrival of old company? The chill wakens our sleepy flesh. Oak and pine leaves burn somewhere on a backyard altar recognized only by children. Cold nights will come, rain. Asters, goldenrod. Who else knows that this is sacred? Who else knows that this day must written? When I was just a boy, I wrote poems, tried to draw maps to get back to this place. The flat blue of sky, the wind coming down out of it, hushing the streets, the people, surrounding one body, one mind, a silk falling around me, a cocoon for overwintering. Where do I go? Where am I? I could as easily wander. Down the streets, back past apartment, through the fence to the field and along the edge of the forest. I could easily forget myself, an unknown prayer on my lips. Why, in all such imperfectness, this beauty remaining? Who am I? Perhaps, a wind came and took that away too.