SUMMER'S END

Was this the year our errant heart

learned to pay attention?

Murders of crows chortle overhead:

It's time! It's time! It's time!

Spiders weave their last chance

Owls call again and again into the dark

our pressing question,  WHO-O-O

A neighbor's hammerblows beat with chiming clock

Nuts hammer the tin of a ruined barn beyond

A red leaf flutters down on the deck

Goldfinches begin to brown

Our cat brings us pieces of once industrious flesh

Spirits alive in grape and apple fall

Fat juicy cumulus give way to ice laced cirrus

Change in the air, halo around the harvest moon

Confident doe and buck feed in open field

Mildly amused by our outraged pup

Spot disguise molted, their young like ghosts

glide silent in and out of woodland light

How suddenly the light is lower

How piercing