Give me a hard-backed chair
tilted on evening’s hind legs
against the wooden wall
of a sun-faded veranda.
Give me trees, broad-leafed,
on the turn, and beneath my feet
let the ground slope away to where
a ribbon road winds into the distnce.
In the shade of the gable-end
I will rest the long-handled axe
against a wall of wood blocks,
chopped to handy-sized chunks.
You, of course, would be there,
would have to be there, and it would
be autumn, always autumn: nights
lengthening, trees shedding.
