One Poem and Sky/Water and Wind

Three Songs at the End of Summer

by Jane Kenyon

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.