Poetry

...Anne Porter Autumn Crocus Some of the leaves Are falling early But there are glinting Dragonflies Hornets in windfalls And a brown honey-bee Searching about In the surviving roses The summer birds Are just beginning Their autumn journeys We watch Their clustered flocks Unraveling in the sky And always rising Until they trail away As small as gnats And higher than the sun We watch them out of sight The air Is drained of summer We're left behind With apple-scented nights With carillons of crickets With planets bright As the Nativity And this new air Whose coolness is itself A kind of fragrance And now the earth Breathes out the unearthly blossoms Of autumn crocus Around the tool-shed door...