My mind is still dark,
night stretches into morning—
the room blooms with sun.

Making things all day,
sun and clouds low in the sky—
September keeps hope.

Skies over beehives,
warm friends keep forty thousand
tucked in goldenrod.

Blown down in the storm,
five months ago orioles
nested and sang here.

Fly towards the moon,
starlings this morning did this—
breaking from the earth.

Deer with new antlers,
sleeping at the river’s edge,
awakened by us.

Last days of August,
wind over the cattail marsh,
the clouds breaks open.

Fragile in the world—
holding the world together,
these soft, beautiful things.

In the cool forest,
moss like an aerial view
of green shadowlands.

The sunflowers sing,
faces flocked with bees all day —
the buzz mixes in.

Branches green with them—
heavy, brown-capped acorns, round,
ready for the ground.

In the hot twilight
crickets don’t sing like last year,
tentative, forlorn.

Towards the summer sky—
August comes and goes quickly,
we prepare goodbyes.

These local heavens—
filled with memory, belief,
and what still could be.

Just out of the ground,
spinning like a galaxy
of woodpecker wings.

In the cool, deep woods,
ruffled around a tree stump,
beauty of this world.

Mutual flourishing—
coral mushroom’s crowns and arms,
growing in the dark.

The trick of the mind,
days that feel like other days,
years like other years.

My dear sunflower,
three vowels raise your round head,
bee on your face.

The sun on their backs,
and the song stuck in their throats,
mark the era’s end.