ABSOLUTE SEPTEMBER

How hard it is to take September

straight--not as a harbinger

of something harder.

Merely like suds in the air, cool scent

scrubbed clean of meaning--or innocent

of the cold thing coldly meant.

How hard the heart tugs at the end

of summer, and longs to haul it in

when it flies out of hand

at the prompting of the first mild breeze.

It leaves us by degrees

only, but for one who sees

summer as an absolute,

Pure State of Light and Heat, the height

to which one cannot raise a doubt,

as soon as one leaf's off the tree

no day following can fall free

of the drift of melancholy.

         from A Kiss in Space (1999)