Come Autumn

September asks for a good fantasy novel, whatever that means. It asks to be hushed - brought low - and, oh so delicately - it's lips practically grazing your ear - to be paid attention to. These first few tumbling leaves, dry and rigid as the world is flat, scrape crumbling by and September scowls. Read Gardner's Grendel, Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun or even R. Scott Bakker. Read Harry Potter if you have to, or Simic's World Doesn't End. That last may be the best. September cocks it's dusky head and, smirking, agrees. "It is the epoch of the masters of levitation." You shiver, unable to resist the wind's nudging and think, oh, just die already. Turn to brown and slate gray, and cold so that I feel at home again.

Once I took mushrooms, for the second night in a row, at a friends house. The pixelated vines grew right out of Mario Brother's 2, right out of the T.V. and across the almost-smooth wall. Later I slunk threw the dark and snoring to the front door, down a couple flights of thick brown stairs and southwest. I slept in an old graveyard for a while, or I must have, because I had dreams there. Those tumbling leaves where as wide and solid as tectonic plates.