Autumn Wind

This afternoon, the wind rustling through the trees outside takes me back to Sunday fall afternoons in college. Dave and I would walk together to one or other secluded spot in the fields beyond campus. He was a senior dedicated to literature; I a freshman, just as dedicated but hardly as sophisticated. Ours was the transitory friendship of a mentor and a novice.

Dave would read poems aloud, and we’d talk about them. I’d shed the loneliness of being in a new place, unmoored from my past.

All the while, the autumn wind would thrust through the treetops, then come back around at us down below. I felt caught up in the sweep of time.