As Time Goes By

Sitting at the desk, writing, I look out the front bay window and my vision is filled with burnt umber. The leaves on the oak tree are turning darker each day, now beginning to curl up around the edges. Over the next few days, they will fall to the ground and join the layers of others from neighboring maples. As I look out the window to my left, the tree is bare, having lost her leaves weeks ago. They sit now in piles in the gutter. Raked there, waiting for the street sweeper to make its yearly rounds - sucking them up, grinding, munching, carrying the mess away to the city compost heap. The sky is a cool gray today, having rained itself empty through the night. I remember this same time of year, four years ago. It was a much more dismal time. A much darker and sadder time. The leaves that fall from these trees cannot even begin to match in number the people whose lives have been lost, tormented, terrorized, upset and divided as the result of choices made by one man. I watch him now, on the news, see him curling at the edges, and just wait for him to fall, onto the lawn, into the gutter. Let the sweeper carry him away.