These leaves lie flat and wet on the winding trail
Their odor of endings: slow, not sharp, but soft, decayed, and stale.
Here adolescent roller-bladers lace up skates
In neon shorts and bulky pads, while mother watches and waits.
A dog and walker range beneath sienna trees
Above, a family of finches, warbling vespers through thinning canopies.
An early sunset simmers the after-storm haze and rolls
Out mist in fuzzy blankets—silver shine on emerald knolls.
On a puddled court among stretching shadows, a couple sets
A heavy ball across a tired net. They laugh and sweat.
The sodium bulbs of distant football fields diffuse;
Still farther, an autumn half-moon, peeking over browning spruce.
Defiant summer, holding back the greedy fall?
Or overstayed its welcome, lingered long past last call?
A flash to south-southwest: the forecast second round
Of thunder-showers threatens. Seasons war, retreat, rebound.
There was a summer? Spring? Memory wants to fade.
And will there be a winter? Of hatchlings and snowfall and verdant glades?
Can you remember the last? Will ever there be a time to recall?
It all seems to happen at once, yet nothing seems to happen at all.
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