Slowly the days grow colder . . .

This is another of the views of the beauty of the American landscape

that I cannot resist taking photographs of. 

They pile up on hard drives and in cloud storage.

How did I ever manage before I had these things???

FALL GRASS

This is the season when the darkest grass
Flows in its deepest waves, on fading stubble;
The time of cloud; and cattle brought to stable
At dusk; and moonlit water still as glass . . .

Smoke in the mornings, and always a crow caws
On wagging wings. Across the first strewn litter
of leaves a squirrel scurries, and children loiter
In roadside pastures after ripening haws.

Time to be thoughtful; time to be getting on
With threshing, and fall plowing; time to gather
Eelgrass, for banking house . . . A frail white feather
Of frost shines in the grass blades and is gone.

Slowly the days grow colder, the long nights fall;
Plows turn the stubble, fires are tended, and apples
Mellow in cellars; and under the roots of maples
Mice are burrowing. And the high geese call.

Charles Bruce
The Mulgrave Road; selected poems of Charles Bruce,
Potterfield Press, Nova Scotia,1985, page 41.

I chose this poem tonight for the line "slowly the days grow colder."  It's a magic incantation against this terrible heat. I also like that apples mellow in cellars, although I don't have a cellar here. And I am not planning to harvest any eelgress, although I love the name and wonder what it looks like.