Before the Heart 

Ripened and blessed for another season,
In late heat, we haven’t lit a fire yet although
The first frost’s been and gone along the ridge
And brought the trees to peak.  Wasps stir and blunder
 
Into second summer, flies trouble the screens
And garden gourds dry on a windowsill.  
We welcome any whippoorwills’ whip will—will—will
That echoes in the vaporish timber where every squirrel
 
Has been transformed into a sleek, full-coated garden lord
And all the acres call us to our knees in a rapture of mulch
And bulb to turn the ground again beside the creek.  
Each dawn gives up its cirrus sky and weak light
 
Scrapes the oaks and stalks across the pines,
While acorns underfoot will crack like buckshot
In the piled up leaves.  A doe, keen with fall rut,
Leaps to the two-lane, takes the headlights in.  
 
How could I wish for trickster spring
When an October morning skitters through the yard,
The cider runs down, sweet and pale and afternoon
Lights up the tin shed roof?  What could I relish more
 
Than geese to honk the hill awake on their way south? 
A hunter’s moon raises an orange sign.  
If friends sing somewhere else, what does that matter?   
Fall is the shelter before the heart winters over.

Fieralingue: Autumn