Indian Summer
Russet rustles in the trees –
impatient, simmering
Bracken starts to hunch
Defeat on the air
Flocks gather, skeins depart
Tiny cellophane wings insist –
buzzing furious insects, reprieved, make hay, drink blood,
Fruit falls, wormy soft
Tractors stripe the fields
Fluffy seeds scatter and drift
Landscape blurs, like old photos album-trapped by pocket corners
The orange sun sighs in the dip of the hills
pausing, it musters: These nights won’t draw themselves in.
We sweat, swelter, sticky sleepless
This heat! But don’t dare to complain –
You can’t be the one to remind unseasonal weather
it really should be further south
