Autumn

Why not write something for those

who scratched out improbable livings here?

Someone has managed to sow

This broken field with stones, it appears,

So someone’s scratching it still,

Although that Japanese knotweed has edged

The tilth. Two wasps in the child

Attempt to catch sun on a rail of the bridge.

The old local doctor has passed

At almost a full decade past ninety.

He never seemed depressed.

Seventy now, if barely,

I consider the field again:

Someone will drag these rocks away

But they’ll be back. The air smells like rain,

Which is fine, the summer’s been much too dry.

Nothing is left of the barn

But some rusty steel straps in some nasty red osier.

The stone fence still looks sound,

But even there the knotweed steps over.

Hadn’t I pledged an elegy

To the old ones who worked here? You couldn’t claim

They thrived, exactly, but maybe

They likewise scented good wind full of rain,

Lifted eyes above this old orchard

To the cloud-darkened hills and found their support

Somehow, somewhere. No matter,

They kept going until they could go no more.

The trees’ puckered apples have gathered

A flock of birds, and as they alight,

They’re full of unseasonable chatter,

As if to say that all will be right.

The old ones I promised a poem

Must have said it too. It’ll be all right.

I never knew them. They’re gone.

I say it out loud, It’ll be all right.

—Caledonia County, Vermont

Source: No Doubt the Nameless (Four Way Books, 2016)