Cold Pre-Winter Curtain

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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 pre-winter,
the cold curtain falling on
summer’s last act,
the silent breathless moment
preceding the uproar impending,

And all the world revolts:
roots unroot,
crops harvest themselves
to futility,
and for a moment,
the pattering once so soothing
now seems to me
a thousand angry footsteps
stomping through the hills,
claiming what is owed them
rightfully,
only rightfully.

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