Everything grows rusted, as we watch the summer fail.
Springtime hopes are lashed with summer grasses in a bale.
The frost transcribes grim epigrams on windows overnight,
And moths no longer twirl about the porch's sullen light.
And what remains we gather up to use another time—
Gleaners, deftly picking through what August left behind.
The crickets have gone quiet now, embarrassed of their song.
They know the coming winter will be unusually long.
The only birds that linger are the flocks of crows and jays—
The rest have fled in protest of the shortening of the days.
So silently we search to see whatever we can find—
Gleaners, deftly picking through what August left behind.
Firewood in crooked ranks is stacked against the cold,
Fallen apples rot around the seeds that they withhold.
Stars sown in the field of night outshine the haggard moon,
As we lay enthralled by the lonely call of the final, parting loon.
In separate rows we comb the field to its wooded borderline—
Gleaners, deftly picking through what August left behind.
