October's henchman has bled again.
Evenly the straw is strewn
without retribution or shame.
An amplitude of human contact
stitched into the farmer's flannel shirt,
that still smells of apple cores, smoke and hay.
This hired hand without pay, here to usher
in bounty and harvest, where yearning is heard
intermittent as an owl in the barn.
At first frost, face down, he knew his place
and his art, presiding over compost and rue -
the last of the soup stirred in
a lonely widow's kitchen. Last spring
the ghosts of her grown children
sprinkled the seeds in all the wrong places -
but a garden grew just the same.
A snow of willows. The landscape shivers.
He never said a word, but she looked for
his company, understanding his serious business
with the weather - befriending pumpkins
in midnight sun. The crows are inconsolable,
their wings leave stains across the moon.
Vol. 38, no. 2, 2010