I am not from here

Last September is indecision
in the knee-deep hayfields around my home,
evenings drifting towards faint chill
Like the hush at the dinner table
just before words hammered out by anger fade.

Locusts shake their rusty tambourines outside
my window tonight, though without
the raucous frolicking song of the
hot August tree frogs.

I am not from here
but the beech tree guards my house anyway,
does not refuse its shade or forget
to tune its leaves to orange,
offering the sun a bit if his own back before
leaves and sun fall into winter.

I am not from here
but the last of the harvest concert swells
outside my Kentucky window and the
sharp green grasshoppers, the skittering crickets and
bandy-legged mayflies echo this welcome,
“But you could be! But you could be!”
 

Alice
Allen Co. Scottsville

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