Autumn Pastoral

Like old men smacking dry lips over cider The leaves are tasting autumn in the air, And in low valleys where the hills stretch wider The smell of woodsmoke spirals slow and clear. Thin orchards yawn into the wind, their fruit Spent swiftly as the years have dropped away, And in the dangling silence a lone bee’s lute Stitches a yellow seam across the day. Where sumac ripens redder in the sun And goldenrod drifts pale, reluctant dust, Two lovers rise and walk the fields as one, Pledging eternal love with eager eyes, Blind to the swift year turning now to rust, The wild geese thundering south through blackening skies.