On eating candy corn, and the coming of Autumn

Orange and white candy corn, where have you been?
Autumn was waiting for summer to leave,
and then it just dropped in. So here you are,
spilling off shelves in wal-mart
and piling up on the scuffed white floors.

I can taste you and your honey-soaked,
saccharine flavor before I drop the first
kernel in my mouth. I can smell the sugar
even as I tear open the bag,
letting air rush in to meet you
the dry, tree bark heat of autumn
being soaked into your yellow base,
your orange torso,
your dull white tooth.

I find it a little disturbing that
one of my cherished traditions is contained entirely
in the act of eating candy,
little shapes of sugar with no nutritional value,
nothing that can subsist you.

Somewhere in the world, people are putting on traditional costume,
picking up their esoteric stringed instruments and
tuning the compliant strings while their grandparents nod approvingly–
recalling how they did the same for their nodding,
compliant grandparents every year;
Before the festival that winds its way down
through the stone streets
as it does each autumn,
past the store which bears their fading hand-painted name
on its fascia.
Such a collection of cultural paraphernalia is a living thing,
and should you be its adopted child,
take heart and be glad.

Be glad that your tradition does not consist entirely
of gaudy bits of candy, which are compulsively
and even guiltily consumed,
regretted,
and quickly forgotten.
And then all that’s left is a clear plastic bag
blowing across the freeway,
and two men smoking outside of a machine shop
are watching this bag
as it leaps skyward and catches the sunlight, somehow brilliantly,
for an instant.

At your book signing

We shuffled forward inch by inch,
until I was alongside the antique wagon wheel
with its rotting spokes and rusted iron straps
Inch by inch,
until I was level with the front doors of the book store
which had been pulled from their hinges and set aside
Inch by inch,
until I could just glimpse your wiry hand gripping a pen
signing your looping name across books, cd’s, and loose leafs of paper

And closer, until I could make out the print of your shirt
and the sameness of our eyes.

Later,
I was speeding home at several hundred inches per second
your new book riding shotgun in the passenger seat
slowly reading itself as wind from the ripped convertible top
came in and turned the pages one by one,
and on,
until the very last page was turned
and your book closed itself
with the small humble sound of paper touching paper