Autumn Afternoons....

The last sunny day of autumn
I am on the bus
each seat swollen
with swaying and slumped passengers
The afternoon light tangles
in the red hair in front of me

I close my eyes
and let my eyelids
soak in the red glow around me.

Behind me a women chatters
in an unknown language
with a voice like a fan buzz in the summer
the blades shoving thick air around-
the clattering whirl of
shimmering vowels
and vibrating consonants

I imagine she is talking to an old friend
about the afternoon sky
or
her favorite book
or
her daughters first ballet lesson.

As the bus jolts and rattles underneath me
(the air alive with the murmur of low voices
and the sputter of a tired engine)

I remember a late afternoon ten years earlier-
laying on a ground that was
brittle with the gentle decay
of orange and red leaves.

The stillness of autumn
jolted by the restless quivers
of giant displaced slabs of earth
slowly shifting
underneath the jagged layer
of the earths crust

(My first earthquake)
A shuttering ground on an autumn afternoon.