10 Miles to October

I went to October by way of the mountain,
taking the road I used to take as a boy,
though the road had changed since those days
and I had changed enough to notice.
The pasture had gone brown after the summer,
and the apples were dropping beneath the trees.

At the first bend I met an old man
who was carrying a bundle of kindling home,
and when I told him where I was going
he said October was farther on.
He pointed past the barn and up the hill,
then went his way as though he had said enough.

I followed the road until I came
to a field with pumpkins left after picking,
some split open by the weather,
some still waiting for the frost to take them.
A blackbird rose from the weeds beside me
and crossed the field toward the mountain.

Beyond the field stood a house
with a lantern hanging beside the steps,
and a woman was sweeping the boards clean
though the wind kept bringing leaves back.
She watched me come along the road
and said I had better keep moving before dark.

I asked how far October might be,
and she pointed toward the woods.
There was a road through them
I had never seen from the valley,
and I took it because I had come that far
and because the day was getting short.

The road climbed until I could see
the farms spread below the mountain,
their fields dark beneath the evening,
their chimneys sending smoke into the cold.
Then I came upon a second house,
smaller than the first and set back from the road.

A man stood beside it splitting wood,
and I knew him before he looked up.
He was my father as I remembered him
when I was young enough to follow him anywhere.
He set the axe against the shed
and told me I was late.

I asked what I was late for,
and he said October had been waiting.
Then he went inside, leaving me there
with the mountain standing behind me
and the road ahead growing darker.
I followed him because the season had opened a way
and I had spent half my life trying to find it.