The tube went in and

The blood came out

Looking for all the world

Like a California Cab

I am opening up even as

I am closing down.

The sun reaches with unseen arms

Across the yard and up the house,

Fingering the patio ceiling as if to

Say, “Look here, you lazy fool, here’s

A web that needs to be brushed away

They ride this fickle wind

Easy as a kite

These October blooms are on borrowed time,

But I made a deal in April to see them through

To their frost-sealed fate

All summer long I have watched

The paper wasps build their nest.

The earth hereabouts is past the point

Of wet, resuming the long, slow dryout

That started with August.

I stare at the weeds on the woods’ edge

Straining to parse something animal

Amid the vegetal

Like the wind, I, too, am furious

At summer’s end.

Another fall

Another hedgeapple fallen

Sunset at 6:56. We’re losing light

Like a leaky balloon wheezing helium

Into the indifferent ether

It is not a matter of longitude,

Though, of course, to some

Degree, it always is.

The dogs are restless.

And so the evening starts.

The croaking herons raised my eye,

And I thought, as I always do,

How like pterodactyls they are

The cocktail is kicking in.

A rarity for me, it seemed

A luxury to balance the

Fall I took teasing my way

Down hill, carefully but not,

It seems, carefully enough.

No nihilism today.

Yes, it’s hotter than hell,

But it’s bloody summer

In Tennessee

I am watching a wasp

Build a paper nest

With deliberate precision

I can only envy.

I have heard the mermaids

Singing each to each—

This is not their song.

We sat beneath the trees, sheltered

From the midday sun by a canopy of

Oak and walnut leaves that played

A toneless music when cued to motion

By the wind

My feet and legs are dirty still despite the shower,

Run with streaks of black-brown where the water

From the mulch cascaded from the surprisingly

Permeable plastic bag and the clean water and soap

Failed to, well, clean.