On a Thursday it’s cloudy and it’s rainy and the men hurry to work with their shoulders hunched forward and their eyes towards the ground. The rain wets their hair and soaks their jackets and runs down their sleeves and drips on their paints and the men wonder why the forecast was wrong, again. It’s been this way for some time now, the clouds and the rain and the soaked shoulders and the forecast that called for sun when there was none to be found. The women scurry about the market now, the drizzle meeting them in between their stops at the cheese tent and the bread tent and the flower tent. They’re buying the things because they know the season is short. The market will be closed in a month and no one will know where to buy their cheese and their bread and their flowers. The rain is strengthening and the women rush their goods to their SUVs, and no one notices the leaves on the trees that are dying and falling and clogging and clinging. The clouds came and the rain fell and while we were busy looking down the leaves changed. When the clouds roll through and the rain stops and the sun returns we’ll look up again and see the deepening colors and fading greens of a young fall, which arrived quietly while we were looking at our shoes and jumping over the puddles.
