and try to catch it in a preserving jar;
carry an iridescent mallard-green beetle indoors,
ruthlessly clasping it,
like poor dumb Lenny with the mouse.
The last days come, and you almost feel a guilty relief
at summer’s well-timed passing…the way it
seems to be dying in its sleep.
Cowering under too-thin polyester quilts,
you listen to the valley, as it becomes a wind tunnel,
heaving and drunken,
the widow-makers cleaving to the ridge-tops.
Upstairs, your daughter clings to her mattress,
while the wind’s calloused palms
pound the slackened drum-skin of your roof.
You stack chain-sawed deadfall and cover furred kindling,
thinking about the ways to keep the winter out-
preparing for the siege of Goth and gloom.
Dahlias bravely bloom their obsessive origami
in an otherwise empty garden, their distant blots
setting like sacred blood clots from a sacred heart.
The rats make haste, sandwiched by the skylight.
You lie in bed, watching their purposeful silhouettes.
It is time to cull the wattle saplings on the creek flats-
they spring up overnight and congregate like street kids.
And, before you know it, the first frost comes,
crusting the mown sedges with sherds of light-bulb glass.
The sky balloons out,
engorging itself with a deep and visceral dye.
There is a recognition on the faces of the people you meet-
the yawning, stretching days curl up into themselves,
making mellow afternoons.
The air is a liquid wistfulness.
And you are a witness.
These are the last throes of summer.
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