Category: grass

the golden hour of the clock of the year. Everything that can run
to fruit has already done so: round apples, oval plums, bottom-heavy
pears, black walnuts and hickory nuts annealed in their shells,
the woodchuck with his overcoat of fat. Flowers that were once bright
as a box of crayons are now seed heads and thistle down. All the feathery
grasses shine in the slanted light. It’s time to bring in the lawn chairs
and wind chimes, time to draw the drapes against the wind, time to hunker
down. Summer’s fruits are preserved in syrup, but nothing can stopper time.
No way to seal it in wax or amber; it slides though our hands like a rope
of silk. At night, the moon’s restless searchlight sweeps across the sky.
~Barbara Crooker “And Now It’s October”

…but I do try to stopper time,
I try every day
not to suspend it or render it frozen,
but like summer fruit, to preserve
any sweet moment for sampling
through stored words
or pictures
in the midst of my winter days,
rolling it around on my tongue,
its heady fragrance
becoming today’s lyrical shared moment,
unstopped, perpetual
and intoxicating.