September has just departed, like a rusty freight train huffing out of the station, brakeman waving his red-lantern goodbye, "You'll never see this train again!"
The train leaves in a gust of lyrics, eddying like (of course) Autumn Leaves. The dusty brakeman sings snatches of barely remembered ballads: he intones Autumn in New York even though the train is bound for Sault Ste. Marie. Somewhere in one of the scruffy houses the train passes, somene is playing Coltrane's recording of Autumn Serenade. The house's patchy garden is full of browning roses, giving up their beauty in the slow but relentless burn of the Fall. The brakeman remembers an ancient love and scratches a poem to her on the door of the fright car. He writes:
This evening
as marble dust
falls through
the sunset
I will cut you a bouquet
of the toasting flowers
that dry beside
the emptied river
