September
The stooks of corn stand shaggy and heavy
like a drove of mighty oxen.
Cows graze
down by the shore
and lie far away
like a band over the hill.
The air is bright and clear.
Blackberries line the roadside!
And in the depths of the wood
the white ink caps glisten
like wax candles in the dark.
Earth and sea brim with fruitfulness.
In the gardens the dull thud
of falling gravensteins,
exploding with juice against the ground.
Large salmon, seeking up-river
run into the fisherman’s net.
The oats are gathered in,
and the harvest mouse young,
no bigger than a fingernail,
red, hairless and with blue spots for eyes,
are raked out of their nest in the corn.
The spiders are in flight,
like a moon-bridge over the fields
there is sun, reflected in their web.
Massive white clouds
sail across the world.
The days slip past,
and the mills are now still.
The earth spins into the dark,
and the Plough swings forward
over black, soughing trees.
To go to meet winter
like a field full of seed –
To enter the night
like a sky whose blue soil
is full of glittering stars –
to die like a day in September
replete with life and light!
For a list of the authors and poems in the anthology, go to here.
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