The Front

This has been unlike other Octobers
my month of majesty and promise
transformed by static high pressure
into endless heat
parched fields
and the desire for air conditioning
when I need to hear the night crickets.
But this evening comes wind
the dry leaves scuttle along the blacktop
twirling between parked cars
and abandoned shopping carts
the curtain's slow dance with the window
intensifies as the white noise banter
of swaying branches climaxes.
Come morning I know the sidewalk will crunch
and my bare arms will acknowledge
a crispness that children of the air once knew
when they still went outside to stare skyward
as geese flocks honked to the South
in formation against a washed out, purple, gray sky
that hung heavy and lifeless over porches where pumpkins sat still un-carved
and they laughed in raked kaleidoscopes
when the weather wasn't a channel.