What a Difference a Day Can Make

I remember innocence,

I remember when
Autumn meant nothing more
Than piled leaves and
Uncomfortable sweaters
And those oddly-shaped decorative gourds
That mysteriously appeared in
All my classrooms

There was no talk
Of complicated beauty
Or of melancholy fruitlessness
Or of the last leaf;
Blown away by a painful new kind of cold

The man on the news
Was wonderfully--
Incomprehensible

And I never had time to sit and think
Like so many old men musing:
It all seems like only yesterday.