Michael Vail ‘24
Walked Through the Park Today

Shall I compare thee to an autumn day?
No, autumn days are nothing like you. For you are a bird, and an autumn day is a construct. What a silly comparison. And I’m not that vain; these words will not last. I wish for them to decay like the leaves on the trees. Ooh, nice transition. They’ll really like that one. The leaves fall to the ground because it is the fall. (You’ve outdone yourself, America. I know “fall” was originally a British term, but at least it never really caught on over there. We never should have adopted it. It’s easy to blame the British, but this one is on us. We got rid of a lot of vowels. Was it beyond our vision to get rid of “fall,” too?) And on this ground is an ant who fried itself after being exposed to the elements. It brought a fuzzy coat and mittens in preparation for the crisp weather, but was met by intense sunlight, unlike in previous days. It could not prepare for this change in temperature, for ants are not human. How would an ant be able to check the weather forecast? Once again, that would be silly. Here’s another silly thing: the bird feeder and its lesser known counterpart, the squirrel feeder. They should not be two separate entities. They are exactly the same except in intention. Have you ever seen a squirrel attack a bird? I haven’t. Let’s not discriminate. There is no harm in letting the squirrels use the bird feeder. My heart’s like yours, my heart’s like yours… Times like these make me appreciate pumpkin spice latte drinkers, the backbone of our society. I firmly believe that every economic recession is caused by the shortage of pumpkin spice lattes after autumn’s end. If the pumpkin spice latte was invented before 2003, the Great Depression would have never happened.