how you know it's here

For the last week or so I've been starting to wonder about fall. How do you know when it's here? I've been told that I've never really experienced a real fall before, and I've been told that it's going to happen soon. It will be Autumn in New York, just like the song, and the air will ring cool and bright like little bells. I keep looking for little clues everywhere, and then I'm never sure. There were pumpkins in the market last time I checked. Candycorn blazes gold, orange, and white in my hands. Tiny fangs when I want them. But these things might just be incidental. They have these things in California and that's how I would know that it was fall... they're heralds of an invisible change.

But tonight for the first time I heard it, walking up 145th with my plastic drugstore bags. The leaves on the sycamore trees are still green, but at night when the breeze blows through them you can hear their brittle melodies. Pffffffffffffffff tc tc tc tc tc tc..... Shhh-c-c-c-c-c-c-shhhhh...

And that's how you know it's here.