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Keith Chandler

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The End of a Season

Time to go home.
Time to leave the landscape blue like drifted smoke
except where a coppery branch has escaped the wind
or finches zip stripy into the distance.
No time to hang about
with frost threatening to fur our bones.
No time to explore the leaf-crisped lanes
where the scents of young summer, Mayflower and rose,
are drops of blood hung on old thorns;
and the birds that brought thoughts of faraway places
with a dip of their wings have flown.
Time to scuttle for roost
as the shape of a white owl quarters the land.
Time, for darkness is at our door,
to shake off our boots with their clumpy fetlocks.
Time to slow down, to stop all openings,
keeping out raggedy thoughts that pester,
to say What can be done Has been done.
The harvest, such as it was, is gathered,
the corners of the field turned back, folded down.
The luminous apples have each one been lifted,
wrapped up in paper like harvest moons.
Elderberry, bled from purple stems,
is bubbling through tubes like crazy plasma.
Time to draw up a chair to the fire,
to polish the dust off the old Spring wines,—
Dandelion, sea-anemone of the sun,
and flame-pale Gorse, good for all seasons.
Time to talk over with grim honesty
high hopes we had when the corn was green.
Time to be close, without passion,
and when the last clinkers have fallen in
time to sleep, to be alone.

 

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