Moment

Apples are blushing up
Falling to the ground as the goats bleat
Joy when their paddock fills with sweetness
(Peter rains fruits on them each evening).
The petunias that bullied my clay pots from
Taos have ceased the riot
Of their cascading blooming; I shall chop
Them down, when their leggy residuals turn
To rust, heralding an autumn, an
Autumn that still must arrive
Although this summer of fire and water
Has not been easy to apprehend.

I sit in my favorite spot outside
Watching wisps of clouds in tentative
White, greying into a blue that feels
Cool. We thought the heat was going to be
Unbearable, but it simply wasn’t.
I say to myself that those clouds aren’t
My left eye, although sight is going if I don’t
Tend to taking care of it,
Which I haven’t done.
My head hurts, the welcome certainty
That this is simply pain of being hungry,
Maybe too tired, and
Not the crisis of a planet.
Do you see how easily good
Intentions go awry?
I have so much to reclaim
And I can’t help one soul
Until my own reassembles.

Here, I say to small creatures,
Stealthy nighttime visitors,
Apples for you, a living pond, low some,
In spite of rain; rain damps
Under my bare feet the grass and weeds
Like velvet, tinctured green and
Striped by mower leavings’ browning.
I walk out towards the light.

In mercurial sky,
This leaving light gilds edges’
Cloudy universe of unending change.
Day gives way to nighttime,
Night gives way to dawn.