| Autumn
in California |
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| ALAN SOLDOFSKY | |
| Published in The Blue Sofa Review – Volume 2, Number 1 – Spring 2000 |
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| It
begins with the loosening of light over the rooftops, with this wind that shakes the loquat tree and scatters leaves across the dew-scorched lawn, frowzy with chickweed and Bermuda grass, neglected all the months of summer. |
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It's a smell like no other— a mixture of smoke and manure that lingers through the morning as the haze rises. It gets trapped in the atmosphere despite the breeze, the wind blowing it back in our faces. We breathe it— what else could we breathe? |
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A child's voice on the cassette machine says "Daddy" over and over. It's almost like having him in the car instead of this air, like a broken promise. It even looks like fall; a glint of anguish through the poplars, the air the color of cider. |
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Years ago in another place, the World Series just over, I'm holding the last baseball of the season, small and lifeless in my palm. I played with it all summer, denting the autographs of the '59 Cardinals: Stan Musial, Vinegar Ben Meizell, Curt Flood. How could have known then what I would come to value? The signatures almost worn off, the legendary, the illustrious dead. |
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Frost on the bridge-struts, the parchment of cornfields soaked with rain. Mushrooms in the yard, the ground beneath the apple tree sour with apples. |
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