so begins the

                                                            so begins the harvest

as deer nuzzle and browse under the hardening moon

as passerine rhythms shift to the muted drone of migration

when with the leaves I am brought down to words

in an open sun-shafted room

prayers gather on the crop stubble

as we suckle from the bending breast

so begins the song

of the bone-white dream         the approaching days of etched grace

the calligraphy of bare trees against blank skies

                                                            so the song begins

with the thinning gusts of autumn

laced with corn stalks left like batons by the harvest

left for the dying wind to defend itself

under a sky about to explode.