Summer poems are prolix, extending tendrils
of metaphor and alliterative allusion; opulently
they reach out to the reader,
to the supposed reader, to the deferential target –
to anyone, really – and, carelessly, indulgently,
to no one at all.

Late summer poems get down,
a bit, to business. They live
the ripeness of the hour, and speak
the word attuned to it.

And then we come to Fall –
a tumbling
of pretense,
a crispness,
a look,
a stop.
And then a look again.

A shortening, then,
as the elegant
whiteness of the page
and behind it, the dark and perfect
eye of the mind,
gently draw in the ear, to be heard.

And then, for a gorgeous little while,
it is winter,
silent
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