First light of it in today’s sharpening clarity
along a tilled ridge and hopes getting rarer
for that Indian summer. Renewed migrations
shatter the estuary’s surface tension, rising
through the blaze between dunes and cloud.
Trembling reddening leaves, breeze
plays out its delicate variations, brings
itself to bear on the season’s new species:
a foolhardy abundance in ripening gardens
where pruned trees’ amputations ooze sap.
It is no loss to be here, on the threshold
of a mottled wood, marram’s limit,
deciphering fungal growth’s lace patterns
or spider webs’ promises of future frost.
Time doesn’t stop, but only for a second
first light of it holds a sharpening clarity.
