Sometimes in my dreams
the walls in my mother’s bedroom
are white and the leaves outside her window
are falling in slow, tender circles except
I can’t put my finger on the exact pattern
one of them is making although
it does remind me of a person
I met once who couldn’t
make her mind up about anything.
Anyway,
it shouldn’t matter if a leaf
is red or yellow or whatever because
there are laws that govern these things
except sometimes the neutrinos
don’t line up correctly, and besides,
how else can you account
for the sadness between us, if not for that,
and the way the leaves always fall.