Late Summer of My Seasons

By William Scott

Like the year,

I am in the lateSummer of my seasons.

Full of green;

a tired green though,

tipped with brown.

The first leaves 

have begun to cover the pavement, and grass 

of Bad Heilbrunn.

Such a mass is yet to fall!

There is still hay to cut,

fruit to pull;

the hearty may yet swim in the lake.

For all this,

a crisp scent of borrowed time begins upon the air.

The Season's descent will be sudden.

The few brown leaves will turn to many,

turn to all;

with hardly a hope of notice

they will be of the Ground.

Some

wetly obliterated under feet on cobble;

some 

matted in grass

to be blanketed in snow;

some 

raked and rotted.

Others

rescued by small hands,

glued to paper and painted other colours,

or pressed between unread pages,

set up high on reliquary shelves

brought down in mid-winter’s death,

little fingers, delicate, studious,

running (amazed) over ancient lacework

of wooden veins.

Still,

some others

blown to a dry spot,

out of our use-seeking gaze.

They,

enduring the chances of dark and cold,

will be witness to the swell of infant buds;
Anastasia trudging in her green galoshes.