Becoming Fall

by Richard Taylor

The harvest now is over,
the summer days are gone,
and yet no power cometh
to help us. Jeremiah 8:20

The warmth has gone, our step slows,
a slant sun strips the finished leaves
to feed the starving air, and days
immaculate in white say
shiver and count.

And yet no power comes
to curl us close and sleeping
one by one across a cuddled bed
that wrinkles still with flowered memory
and fading sweat.

But come it did with rules
as soon as we could stand
and love them to forgetfulness,
as hay that wastes uncut
in the wind’s short kiss

come by to claim an ear
that’s stood the infallible quiet,
and longs to print with hand or foot
some faint trace upon a fierce
familiar earth.