Endings By Robert Rice Water’s surrendered the streambed, mostly to moss and drying rock. Bits of brown stick to work clothes, and grass, old now, if crushed or broken, stays crushed or broken. Life thins.
Three hours ago it was heat we suffered up on Noonmark. Smell that now? She’s lit the woodstove.
I have believed in October most of my life, warmed in the light of infinite noon. Now it’s the hard time: air cold as earth, spare singing of stones, that faint stain of sun up on the ridge. Though cottonwood trees would sleep, their leaves, caught in some rhythm old as God, rustle, disquieted, cling a little longer to green.
She’s pulled the kitchen door shut against the evening chill. Shall we go in?
We’ve lost the last whispered light. Look. Star out.
40