SEPTEMBER, THEY SAY, is for the better. In this month belonging to the trees I decided quite emphatically, to set my mind on the right path, of the right fork in the road of this night way. The tall grasses and mud that I’ve been walking through for months have been shed and dried and with the remnants still flaking from my shoes, I begin to look ahead and see something.

It isn’t magnificent, and it isn’t hostile, and it isn’t so overly abundant or unsatisfying. It’s not green, or pink, or patterned, or old. It isn’t familiar.

It is new. Each day I travel, each morning beginning with one lift of one foot, set forward. Then on again, in front of the other and the other, until this something becomes my calm and everything, and I can look down to clean feet and concrete.

And September — the tree’s September, the leaves’ September — can, too, be mine.