The Autumnal City

The autumnal city shifts like a tide beneath all cities. A current underneath the geographies in which we happen to find ourselves. It leaks through though, sometimes - like the light spilling out of late night grocers onto October pavements - and I almost taste the hallows of its sleeping, ever-stirring streets. I fry mushrooms for dinner, and in the sizzle and smoke, I hear the cluster-rustle of leaves of September pavements, blown from the branches of short thick trees. In the autumnal city the leaves can be fried and eaten, and only the apples might kill you. I hear the sleepers here, in this city that is a time, in this season that is a place - and their dreams leak too, run like streams down the gutters of smoke-dark rain on long drawn-out Sunday afternoons. Do they know they sleep here? I do not wake here, but always reach for this place, and the city slips away from me. It is here though, in everything I do, and I know that given a certain twist of a curving alleyway, or the steam train flicker of playing cards being shuffled, I might find my way into this city that has no end, no outside, just an infinity of ever-darkening and beguiling afternoons.