Summer’s Friendships part II

On branches that do not bend

Finches chirp, feeling autumn’s wind;

Descending clouds passing in silence,

Settle on top of Red hill.

Winter is coming.

 

Leaves dip, dive, float into piles of dancing;

Before they huddle in the rain.

 

Winter seeks its partner,

Courting fall as it approaches;

Prancing through romantic nonsense

On cloudy fall days;

Summoning the wind,

To push the final rain.

 

The groom will choose his place;

Wether to lean on a fence or drift into open space.

 

Scurrying with memories

On ground not yet abandoned,

The yard, covered with leaves,

Should be raked before the snow.

 

I have to go out.

 

Should I stand and cut wood first,

Bend and bale hay, rake, or kneel and pray?

Or, do all three, as winter

Has been heard to say?

 

I shelter behind stone walls in Center Harbour

 New Hampshire,

Bordered with leaves, ankle-deep, and getting higher.

 

 

I will hibernate in summer’s fallen leaves

In good conscience,

Wrapped in its friendship;

Embracing her beautiful note of good-by

Still feeling her presence.

 

The clouds have settled on top of Red hill

Finches chirp, on branches that do not bend

As it passes, still.

  

Finches Chirping:

“Love will be understood when you miss each other’s presence.

Not your remembrance that turns a season,

Eventually to sleet.

 

Mired in the slush and mud

Where foot prints become engraved

In the sucking sludge of every step

Of promises, that never should have been made.

 

Promises impossible to keep;

As each step unpredictably made.

Encouraged and planned, as only presence speaks,

 of what is seen, and what is  heard.

 

Do not fear the groom.

What A wonderful summer it has been.”