Equinox

 Leaving September

If I have once forgotten on this field
The long light of the dusk, or far away

The sheep on tawny grass, how stones will yield
Small bitter puffballs, or a cricket stay

To wring wry tunes from emptiness and dearth,
Let me remember; let me hold them now

Close to the heart--while I upon the earth
Am the stone field and pain the heavy plow.

Not in wide measures is the harvest culled;
Not by disaster nor by cutting hail

 

 

Is the loss seen, the grief is somewhat dulled--

Being done at last. Ours is a different scale--
Leaving September stars and a little smoke
And memory tight as a lichen to an oak.
--Loren Eiseley