Amos & the Autumn Wind

The goose was kind, the air was thin, the rivers all turned amber-skin. And Amos, hat-strap snug and tight, rode autumn home into the night.

She was an older goose, a patient one, who'd carried smaller fares before the sun. "Hold on," she said, "and try to keep your hat — the wind down south is opinionated, flat."

Below them, hedgerows turned to copper braid, the little ponds went pewter, then to jade. A farmer waved a hand he didn't lift — just knew, the way old farmers know a gift.

They passed a steeple ringing five o'clock. They passed a barn that wore a weather-frock. They passed a child who pointed at the sky and said one word, too small to qualify.

"What was that word?" asked Amos, half a-doze. The goose, who had a goose's gentle prose, replied, "It was the word for going-home — the one we lose, the older that we roam."

He tucked it in his pocket, just in case. The wind unspooled a ribbon round his face. The river bent. The map ran out of green. The south appeared, the way a door is seen.

She set him down beside a willow's knee. She said, "Now wait a year. I'll come for thee." He bowed. She lifted. Autumn shut its door. The word for going-home was his to store.

All winter long he turned it on his tongue — a coin, a key, a candle freshly hung. And when, in spring, the goose came back to call, he didn't need the word at all, at all.

For going-home is something feet remember, the way the year remembers each September. And Amos, full of amber-coloured air, climbed up, and rode it back to anywhere.

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