R is for rustling

Not that kind of rustling, pardner. The sound. It’s the wind in the trees and the leaves under my feet.

It’s the sound of autumn. The rushing in the leaves and branches as the not-yet-gales try out the trees for size. The snap and crunch of leaves around the benches at school where I wait for the doors to open.

I walk to school, turning the last corner, and am greeted by the stance of trees along the side of the road. The wind is there before me. Sometimes I think it hurries me, at other times,
it welcomes me.

And while I may miss things around me in that head-down-walk-fast speed, at times, I don’t miss the wind. It lifts my head from the pavement view.  That’s good.

It’s not really properly autumn yet. Many of the trees are yet to change their colours. The wind is nipping at me, but I am resisting the point where I zip the extra lining into my coat, so it can’t quite be autumn yet.

The wind disagrees. It is already chasing leaves around the playground, already catching them up and dropping them, like a child with a toy, on repeat.

But I like this. For the times when I think that we’re just in the same cycle, school-homework-cook tea-bedtime, the rustling reminds me that the year is moving, that there is change, even if I only see it in the first hillocks of leaves around the bottom of the benches.

Wherever I am in my thoughts by the time I reach the school gate, the wind is niggling at me, reminding me of seasons and movement and right here right now.

Right here right now, I am just happy to take in the sounds. The wind in the trees and the leaves under my feet.

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