Woman at the Garage Sale in September

“We used to all live in big houses, you know?” she said, as I loaded her LPs into the trunk of my car—Debbie Boone and Dvořák and other unlikely marriages—
And it seemed something more than rhetorical,
As if she needed me to acknowledge not the size of her past homes, but something more foundational—an archetype that has survived 10,000 garage sales and 10,000 more to come

An understanding passed between us—some code in a game of Cloak and Dagger,
But after our eye contact said all it could, there were no words to hang on our mortality,
So I just nodded and looked around the neighborhood of houses with no stairs and
Driveways built so that no one could falter unless their body more badly betrayed them, the asphalt as congruent with balance as could be leveled by thoughtful pavers

“You sure?” I said, looking back at the LPs

“Sure,” she said, “take them all, they’re free” and she shrugged her shoulders as one immune to bad news—
She found it so easily to let go, of records or of square footage

Some change passed in the air, like geese migrating, their honks descending to say that
Perhaps all things pass this way, right where she now stood
And not because you ever want to let go
But because there’s nothing left to hold onto;

When release becomes the only good path left to walk
We enjoy at last how little we need a large house and, instead,
Savor the quiet comforts of evening
Or the quiet morning of a garage sale

She smiled as a I said goodbye,
Like a white oak dropping opening its leaves, unbereft, with arms extended to a waiting autumn,
To see, I imagine, what time would make of such openness and such humility
Letting reality empty into her
Like light on a white, pink morning