Dispatch #168

Goodbye summer!

August Margin


       a flurry of late 
summer bees 
            blurring Russian sage 


*

(On the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary)

           shrouded by the sun 
     and beneath
her feet    the full moon 


*

            a century of
winters: illegible name
       on the cracked gravestone


*


gnats churn  
above a weed-dark ditch
           —air so humid 
    it slaps you drowsy


*

      not the moth itself 
but the shadow 
              of the moth


*


           in the margin of 
August, in the deep end of 
           night, in frog chant 
                   and cricket trill, 
      in prayer book 
                 and lamplight


*


vacant Dollar Store 
       parking lot—invisible 
              laughter ricochets


*


       kaleidoscopic
cloud cover
             revolving light, rain


*


        a walk in the rain
to slough off 
             what’s left of a dream 


*


       the kousa dogwood’s
reddening 
            berries—summer’s end 

*

Envoi 

Penumbra of early September:
a faint thread of cold 
at dawn’s watery edge—
           humidity 
visibly dense.