Summer's End

Before I noticed
here's summer's end:
Cicadas whirring like frying grease
along the drought dry path,
suddenly the brown leaves twisting
and dropping in the crackling grass.

I welcome the soberness of autumn, the inwardness,
the bare stretch beyond.
In the richness of my life,
the knowing I will never die,
I face the autumn wind of mortality
I run across the bare field
embracing my aloneness and my death,
because I still don't believe I will ever die or be alone.


My old cat is dying, the last of the three who spanned the growing up years of my daughters.
He's given up eating . He lies, a furry skeleton, waiting and sometimes asking me to do
something, he just doesn't know quite what.

There should be a lesson here,
the arc from beginning to end before my eyes.

Still, I refuse.
I think I have forever and keep
squandering
all the way to spring.