It's such a gorgeous Indian Summer day I thought I'd post one of my old poems.

September and Still Summer


The eloquent call of plump geese
lazing toward the southern horizon
because the shadows are not yet too long
and they can take their time
marks time on an afternoon too hot for the season.
The grapes are sweet this year, their thirst
making their swan song one to remember.
Even the ants stagger among the soft and dusky
blackberries, glutted, disbelieving, like children
let stay out past their bedtime, how lucky they are.
Old men meander through the hardware stores
reaching to stroke storm windows and gutter screens
with thumbs still sugared from being
pressed into the kernels of the late corn
at the farmers’ market,
and think that tomorrow will be soon enough
to put the shutters on.
And somehow this late summer we are all farmers,
watching the geese, and the long shadows,
Becoming almanacs, rehearsing sentences like
“The hottest, longest spell in twenty years”
for some future sit-around,
storing the memory like good vintage
to sweeten our tongues
on the hard nights yet to come.