Fall Song

Fall Song by Mary Oliver

 

Another year gone, leaving everywhere

its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

 

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply

in the shadows, unmattering back

 

from the particular island

of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

 

except underfoot, moldering

in that black subterranean castle

 

of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds

and the wanderings of water. This

 

I try to remember when time's measure

painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

 

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing

to stay - how everything lives, shifting

 

from one bright vision to another, forever

in these momentary pastures.

Done