september
It is cool in the
mornings again! Dew
catches on spider
webs! Crickets stuff their
hands in their pockets!
It is cool in the
mornings again! Dew
catches on spider
webs! Crickets stuff their
hands in their pockets!
for Mom & Dad
It’s August, and your sign lounges
underneath the sun of summer,
lolls a lazy tongue, and rumbles
distant thunder in its throat. How
lovely that one month can bear as
at scratch of claw and tip of tail
your two holidays, between them
the long hot plain of plain hot days,
and while you sit beside a camp
fire seasoning the summer air
with ember memory, above,
in gaps between still leaves, pairs of
fireflies circle silently where
in half a year your sign will rise
and rampant bare its broad and star–
studded chest, gape its maw and roar.
It helps too to know
that the ground where you stand
is not different at root
from the parcel of land
you are pleased to call home.
Wherever you are
is a suitable place
to be found hard at work
by a god full of grace
when work is your reward —
to bound like a boy,
full of stories to tell,
drawing laughter on up
from your eyes like a well,
your face creased with joy.
Are the falls worth it?
If you like that sort of thing —
descent, water, rest
What the green–stemmed cup-of-dainty knows
is evanescence. Here tomorrow or
not the same small rule obtains: to grow
unnoticed in the shadows of the more
likely hillsides of the earth, and wait
for heavy humid breezes to bring rain.