A Song in September

by Bruce McRae

​Pax Augusta, summer done in
by planet-tilt, by starry procession.
Summer fading like a farmer’s tan.
In the same way civilizations rise then fall,
cities abandoned to distress and ruin,
creeping vines redressing cultural sprawl,
former gardens under thirteen inches of dirty water.

Summer, with a wound in its side.
Written off as natural progression,
disposable and beyond care or repair.
Summer past is an olive orchard untendered.
Summer lost is an old man in a chair.
He wonders how he came to be there.
If he’ll live through winter.

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