It Wasn't The Wind

It wasn’t the wind
that made the day glorious.
Who among us hasn’t witnessed the gallop
of dust and debris—hair swept
silly, lashing into the eye; who has not
walked headfirst into a force so great
it grows
sideways across the earth; it
lifts the arms and then throws
them up and then throws them
back.

It wasn’t the wind that startled us all
into a liberating stance.
It was the leaves.
Thousands of them—millions—tumbling
over one another, bursting
out of the shadows, quickly buried
unburied,
free, the leaves like a ridiculous
autumn blizzard making the streets,
the sidewalks,
even the foliage yet to fall,
glorious.

On any other day,
in any other season,
there would have only been the wind,
a black and white cloud,
life—
I would have
closed my eyes
to the lashing, the repeated
sting, the pile of gold
building steady at my feet.

I would have forgotten.