Harvest

Late light over the field

wheat leaning, not from sorrow

but because it has finished.

I walk the edge of it.

The wind passes once, twice,

touching everything equally.

An apple has fallen.

It has not argued.

Its sweetness is already leaving it.

In the barn someone has begun

to turn the press.

The smell of cider comes out

into the yard like a memory.

A child runs the road between fields,

then is gone again

only the sound remains a moment

in the rows.

Bees keep to the last asters.

They do not hurry.

They enter, they leave,

they return.

The creek has lowered its voice.

It says what it can

over the stones.

I stand a while longer

than I meant to.

It is not the harvest

that holds me

not the baskets filling,

not the barns—

but the way everything

is willing now

to be exactly what it is.

Nothing is trying to continue.

Nothing is asking to begin again.

Even the light,

spending itself across the field,

does not resist.

I take this in

as one takes in breath

without deciding to.

When I turn back

there is already more shadow.

Still, something follows

not thought,

not belief,

only a quiet

that seems to know

its own sufficiency.