Over and Over Stitch

Late in the season the world digs in, the fat blossoms

hold still for just a moment longer.

Nothing looks satisfied,

but there is no real reason to move on much further:

this isn’t a bad place;

why not pretend

we wished for it?

The bushes have learned to live with their haunches.

The hydrangea is resigned

to its pale and inconclusive utterances.

Towards the end of the season

it is not bad

to have the body. To have experienced joy

as the mere lifting of hunger

is not to have known it

less. The tobacco leaves

don’t mind being removed

to the long racks—all uses are astounding

to the used.

There are moments in our lives which, threaded, give us heaven—

noon, for instance, or all the single victories

of gravity, or the kudzu vine,

most delicate of manias,

which has pressed its luck

this far this season.

It shines a gloating green.

Its edges darken with impatience, a kind of wind.

Nothing again will ever be this easy, lives

being snatched up like dropped stitches, the dry stalks of daylilies

marking a stillness we can’t keep.