Footsteps

When the leaves fall, I will see the forest best. An entire season of waiting, and fall is about to enter that forest. The fall not of seasons, but the fall of time. I feel it in the blue of the blanket I plan to take out from the closet. There are a few holes in that blue, and the blanket has seen many a winter. I have studied under that blanket, as a student then as a teacher. And autumn chills remind me how happy I was discovering what others had discovered before me and put it in words. Or in colors. Or in that soft smile one discovers when the leaves fall and the forest shows its bareness. Such nudity cannot be ignored when one is cozy under the blue blanket. Which has a few holes.

I read about footsteps today, while I was planning to read about feet. In fact I started reading about feet and the way people adapt to walking without a foot after disease or trauma. Yet, without warning the surgeon who had written about feet, brought in the topic of footsteps. How footsteps live longer than feet and tell the story of the walk. That we know about the footsteps of our ancestors but nothing about their feet. That an archeologist never finds feet, but their passage and imprint. And I thought every student, when the leaves fall, when the blue blanket keeps them cozy and protected, they learn about footsteps. Yet, in a strange way, I thought that teachers learn about feet. Sometimes their own, after a long day of not being upon their feet, but asking others to run upon steep hills in pursuit of what their teacher had not chased or had ran out of breath trying.

How many footprints would one leave when the leaves cover the ground under the trees and the forest shows its glorious nudity? How many forests have I seen but stayed away from taking a walk into their insides knowing that the trees will hide little in autumn. Except perhaps promises. And I smiled thinking that I have left many footprints, at least taken many footsteps to meet promises brown or blue eyes made to me when it was spring, when it was summer. When autumn was not just a season but a state of promise. When poetry is all I gave, hoping that I may get it back when brown or blue eyes find my footsteps in sand or snow, or just under their window. And footsteps I left in cemeteries on two continents while visiting my daughter, my father and now my mother. Footsteps like all men and women have left, yet this time unique as they hide my tremor and slow pace. Without anticipation. Amazingly in peace.

I have an old bottle full of old Armagnac, somewhere. I kept it for a special time, when time was not special. It was just time, and I had plenty of it. So, I kept that bottle, sometimes found it again, and kept it once more. Last time I saw it, I wrapped it with the blue blanket and laid it on its side, deep into the closet. “For next fall” I recall thinking. I must have said that more than forty times, as four decades have passed since I started keeping that bottle of Armagnac for a special time. As I read about footprints, I thought about that bottle. Is it time? What is special now to take the bottle out of its dust? Footsteps. Maybe it is the desire I have to smell the mothballs I put in the blue blanket to minimize new perforations. Yes, it is that combination of mothballs, autumnal chill, the coziness of the blanket, and the memory of promises that I feel like celebrating. Will the bottle of Armagnac give me that extraordinary pleasure I have been postponing more than forty times?

Or will I find it again, wrapped in the blue blanket, in the back of the closet, and after a moment of holding it, I will say to myself “For next fall”? Because then the trees will be taller and will drop more leaves. And my footsteps will leave no footprints, because then I will decide to walk into the forest. Because I will not believe any other promise made by brown or blue eyes, and will not wait under a window or near a tall door. Then, the only walk I will take is into the forest, with the blue blanket upon my shoulders. A blanket with old holes.

Cimetiere Ancien

It just might be that
When the song is of tears
And the wine is of that river
Where the sun sets timid and red
Next to a town so old
Where women dress in black
Before their men leave for the salty sea
For the sea may keep them
And the shore in their names will only shape
Froth and moss

It might be that
In that sunset I missed
The tenderness
A summer night could have shared
When the song was of tears
And the wine of that shiny river
Still shy
For the night was just a vast moment
Of finding and bidding farewell
To a smile so calm
And to a name I knew

It just might be that
I still think one day
I will be back there
Where the sea is salty
As if the taste of hidden tears
Silently dropped
In a simple glass
Of old wine

Corbeille d’Amour

Une pluie de deuil
La remise
De toi

Je dors le silence
De ton nom
Penombre

Un cailloux
Avec cinques trous
Des temps fous

Une pluie de calme
Blaime et mal-peignee
Je te garde

Je te suis
Depuis