Three Songs at the End of Summer 
    A second crop of hay lies cut
    and turned. Five gleaming crows
    search and peck between the rows.
    They make a low, companionable squawk,
    and like midwives and undertakers
    possess a weird authority.

    Crickets leap from the stubble,
    parting before me like the Red Sea.
    The garden sprawls and spoils.

    Across the lake the campers have learned
    to water ski. They have, or they haven’t.
    Sounds of the instructor’s megaphone
    suffuse the hazy air. “Relax! Relax!”

    Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,
    fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.
    The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod
    brighten the margins of the woods.

    Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;
    water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.

    *

    The cicada’s dry monotony breaks
    over me. The days are bright
    and free, bright and free.

    Then why did I cry today
    for an hour, with my whole
    body, the way babies cry?

    *

    A white, indifferent morning sky,
    and a crow, hectoring from its nest
    high in the hemlock, a nest as big
    as a laundry basket ...
    In my childhood
    I stood under a dripping oak,
    while autumnal fog eddied around my feet,
    waiting for the school bus
    with a dread that took my breath away.

    The damp dirt road gave off
    this same complex organic scent.

    I had the new books—words, numbers,
    and operations with numbers I did not
    comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled
    by use, in a blue canvas satchel
    with red leather straps.

    Spruce, inadequate, and alien
    I stood at the side of the road.
    It was the only life I had.

                          Jane Kenyon