Summer Into Fall

High In a blue glaze, a raptor wheels Unresolved to kind, the breed gropes On nut-stained pinions A soundless sight While the eye Burns icy pride— And earth smolders.

High Noon! Shrill, shrill, impossible, A cedarn copse has found A sybil—‘til the miscreant jay, Descendant of a winter sprite, outraged, Vaults off, a querulous flash Of frosty protest. The stifled silence Pierced for a moment, swallows a soundless sigh. On the thin, blue Back of the sky, fleecy feather-fingers float.

High Tide! Taught, caught in the moment A hover fly-crystalline lance, strained to a bell on net-vein Sinews, — quivering glass—shelled memory Of a softdown wind and a summer’s day— The brown-eyed wonder and the fragrant stalk. Indeed, it was just a scented wind ago (But another day, another year) When a young boy snatched at a hover fly, and clutched In rumpled hands, the empty air.

Nothing changes—ever. The insect drones a lazy paean to the sun In the molten noon, and there is not winter. But the brook is ice and the leaf is mould Till the grass is sweet again. How to measure time— Earth reborn, and flesh a year dissolved. Again full cycle, and the fly is gauze on the garden walk— And childhood’s done, with memories.