Girl on Sunday

She held a yellowed leaf above her head,
like an umbrella, on a sunny Sunday morning
dancing to the beat of stop-and-go cars
and flickering traffic lights.

There is no one in the world but her
and she is frolicking in an April storm.

She jiggled down the street,
knees like doorknobs,
and I watched, aghast at how
little there was to worry about
on a Sunday morning.

I had woken up and breathed in the air,
knowing this would be the last day
when it was too hot for the heated house
in many months. I woke up wanting

desperately to cherish the sun
and the color. Soon it would melt,
like gruel in a pot, like over-mixed paint,
to a gray, greasy, ice-splotched winter.
I took a walk, hoping to remember

the smell of fall, and the reason for love.

Instead I found that girl, impossibly
unaware, imposing in her hopefulness
already looking past snow leaking into
the tops of boots and toward squeaking galoshes.

Only the delicacy of youth
would look forward to the rain. And only I
would wish for a little less wind on a day
that shouldn't have happened anyway.