One of Those Days
by Theodora Goss

It is one of those days when I feel completely out of step
with the world, when I am convinced
I should be somewhere different . . .

Walking through a forest of tall trees, preferably maples
because it is autumn, and their leaves would create
a carpet, maybe even a path
of red and yellow. And I could follow it,
in the belief that I was going somewhere.

What has happened to my life?

My moments are measured by clocks,
not by the chirping of crickets, or the call
of birds in the underbrush at the edge of the forest,
not by the movements of water
as it falls over rocks into a pool.
Not by the sun sinking lower.
Although I know, I can feel, that it is all
falling: the leaves, the sun,
the running water into the still water.
And then the birds and crickets falling silent.

I can feel it even though in my efficient life
where the clocks are marking time,
all the minutes are the same: one after another,
in equal intervals. Still, outside my window,
behind the reflected electric lights,
slowly darkness comes,

like a benediction. And I feel
once again, that I was born elsewhere
and have, still, elsewhere to go . . .
where beneath tall trees, slowly the leaves
and evening are falling together.

(The painting is Woman at a Bureau by William Smith Anderson.)