a cold wind against my shoulder woke me up in the middle of the night an autumn leaf was scraping against my window like it was trying hard to get inside and then a ghost that i had met before he kept me up until dawn and everything i thought was right was suddenly all wrong he said your score is looking pretty bad and then he asked me what it was that i had to show so i went running down a list of things some were real but on some of them i lied because i felt i had to justify each breath that i d been breathing in this life then i realized i was playing into someone else s rules trying to keep my score up in a game i did not choose then i looked that ghost straight in the eye and said you d better not be coming back by again and it s true that i don t work near as hard as you tell me that i m supposed to i don t run as fast as i could but i live just the way i want to and that s the way i should october s leaves were dancing around like angels dressed in robes of red and gold but november s come and gone now and they re lying in the gutter out along the road they re going to make their way out to the ditch or someday to the sea they ll get to where they re going without the help of you or me and if each life is just a grain of sand i m telling you man this grain of sand is mine 