September: "Angeload"

September blow soft till the fruit’s in the loft. -16th Century Proverb

Angeload, this poem is about you, but is not for you

Because the blush is on the apple, sugar’s rush to cover
Itself with the belabored wane of summer’s fullness;
And fox broom and goldenrod have come to no good
By savaged month’s end as forests blush deeply
At what summer has done to itself in the end:
Trees fill their spatula shapes with sapphires
And colors of the flame - smoky pumpkin and fazed lemon.

But as steadfast as fir and spruce expose their spines,
Green wood’s last opposition unravels to the first of autumn,
It is a wandering time for all who can walk or think...
And fox-terrier and corgi terrorize the warrens, coming back
From Canuck Hill with fur matted in dew and blood while leaves
Hang in snags beneath the belly’s hem, an elegantly stained slip
Shred in some Dianic drama, backlit by moonlight.

The morning air in our room is super-cooled by last night --
A storm front's exorcism -- flushing us from warm beds
To dog-walks among orchard’s golden tents, last asylum
From time’s windy stead. And for instinctual reasons,
The inquisitive whiskers, the assured, anthracitic nose,
The bifurcated eyes, the mane of foxy merriment --
All these assumed the equinox without comment.

Lady, look, light catches your two shades in plain wicker. . .
And see, Jasper, your dog survived the shot-guns and damp duck-
Blinds, never really much of a huntress in the first place. . .
But one eye goes dark like late leaves, the other blue again
This year, for a cold day of atonement to come: high skies
Of cancerous cloud fever the laden land with bronchial rattle
Changing over summer’s someday to autumn’s from now on –

Yet without Angeload, for whom this poem is, but not about.