The garden was put to bed this morning.
The tomato and squash vines, the cabbage roots
and woody, overgrown kohlrabis
were pulled and tossed on the compost pile.
Weeding and bedding done
I sat on a broken bench with some coffee.
In a sheltered corner by the barnyard wall,
the sweet sun rested me.
A flock of geese rose up over the machine shed.
They circled back over the corn stubble
but spied me and thought better of it.
High and higher, they shrank away to the southeast.
A few feet away, a scattered mess of feathers
are all that remains of a guinea fowl
who disappeared a few days ago.
Her two sisters still roost in the woodlot.
I went to one funeral last night
and another this afternoon.
Two friends, actors I've directed.
They took their last bows in a box of ashes.
Leaves turn and slip away on the wind.
Their reds and golds fade and fall.
While night-drizzle speckles my face,
the dead sleep dry in serenity and surety.
The universe makes us one promise.
We will live and die once, and once only.
Our eyelids, dry husks, close over the contract.
The agreement is always kept.
I will not miss the wild geese.
Though their tin horn cries of farewell
are spattered with red-gold and dipped in long shadows.
They will return with the trilliums.
I will see the actors faces
in wild roses and plum blossoms,
in the afterimage of a hot spotlight,
and the fresh pages of a new book.