August’s End

A breeze lifts the summer heat, bends ripening grass with its knowing kiss

blue skies slant, the sun’s eye now less direct

over chanting grasshoppers and cicadas

Soon the school buses will begin their rounds,  dropping and picking their boisterous cargo

black-eyed susans fade, shrivel, nodding toward our wood pile

and a single pumpkin, rogue offspring of last year’s jack-o-lantern, ripens on a fence by the garden.

Soon the nights will be cooler, silvery, longer,  and darker

but for now the heat remains