The summer lane runs down to autumn;
the golden fields are tumbled to the plough;
the piping bird in the hawthorn warns, uncertain,
as the lapwings flail and weep
and the gun-metal rooks cut flights of grey
through the broken-hearted air.
Arrowed wedges, glinting sun,
print wet the tractor’s trail,
pointing slow
to the yellow-fingering willows
stirring the lingered warmth, the falling stream.
The lingering warmth in her heart
is shaken too.
On this day of shattering sunlight,
as the shouting clouds
pace slow the cool, high blue,
as the wasps and dragonflies,
deep-drunk on the wine of summer, dance to death,
the autumn cobwebs catch around her hopes,
hang weeping lace around her fading dreams...
I cannot bear that she should die a little,
cold,
alone,
beyond the reaching kindness of your sun;
I cannot bear the shadowed, wintering chill
that falls across her shining, white-heart joy,
not knowing where you go...
And yet to grow
I know
it must be so;
to die to live
the world turns wonder round;
her spring will come.
And you, her constant darling,
her warm, gold-hearted sun,
will smile and take her trembling in your arms...
(September,
1983)
