Cold Pre-Winter Curtain

So this is how the autumn comes:
flooding my pasture,
drenching the weeping corn stalks,
floating pumpkins off protesting
the injustice of too much rain
and not a wink of frost.
When it’s dry, the land scratches by
instinctively,
barely moving or breathing,
inching through the suffocating dryness,
content to exist another day
still standing,
reaching toward the sun.
But let it rain the gray streaming rain
of southern [...]