77

Autumn Voice in August

What omen brushes me unawares

bespoken here by an autumn voice in August?

Down my avenue of unruffled pines and poplars

there rustles a small cipher of wind

that does not stir the heavy sunlight

firmly footing leaf and aisle.

Almost I do not hear it.

Almost would let it pass, unquestioned,

but at my back Big Bald Creek

mutters to it a pointed counterpoint,

accustomed to remembering old voices

down the channel of its steady descent.

Nor can I unheart all fluid loves

or reclaim from passing places

the spent selves of my journeying bestowed there

in a lavishment of spirit

I will not label “waste.’

But now. Neither tempest

nor whisper, this pressuring stir

abides, messenger of earth’s voices

caught, as in a repeating crystal bell.

My sphinx, nudging me aware

0on the oblique small wind,

do not try me so.