Wannabe Farmer

"That happens
to the leaves after
they turn red and golden and fall
away? What happens

to the singing birds
when they can't sing
any longer?       – Oliver, "Roses, Late Summer"







Last night
as the sunlight faded
across the hall
of the October bluffs
the bay flickered
by young fish.

What fish they were
did not matter,
for it was a sound
and a hundred little
flashes of silver
that caught the eye.

It was an entertainment,
the kind that flashes by
along the broad surfaces
of the earth every moment,
of every day like messages
of love that emanate
from our minds, silent.

Later we learned
again the childs' lesson
of our sun, our largest star,
how it's enormous
powers had been unlocked
by an explosion
and then re-coralled
into its own clouded, circling empire.

A million miles
away the last of the burst protons
have reached the thin
gray sheen of water of the blackening bay
and indicates night –
a warmth stirs the fish to bite.
Gnats, perhaps, no larger
than dust specs find the belly
of fish and wash
into another universe.