You sip iced passion tea on your screened porch:
striped straw from the Fourth of July,
a still-sandy paperback,
and a heart heavy with mid-August.
Weeks remain until Labor Day,
time left to grill a few more steaks,
visit the cousins in New Jersey.
But you hear it, don’t you?
The invisible choir’s dirge
in the magnolias. Your cheeks sting
from sun’s last darts along the canal,
where you saw dogwoods tinged with red.
You searched instead for black-eyed Susans,
those party girls of flora, still dancing
when everyone else is leaving.
And now, you try to savor your last sip of passion
tea. Sure, you love the laughter of leaves in their time
and wood smoke snaking from chimneys.
But something about the rattle of a rake
in a distant neighbor’s yard
is enough to drive you inside
and shut the door on the listening fall,
whose crisp breath you swear you can feel
on your bare arms.
–
Karla Daly lives, writes, and edits in Washington, DC. Her poems appear in SWWIM, Rust + Moth, Unbroken Journal, MER: Mom Egg Review,and elsewhere. She is a recipient of DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities fellowships and a midlife graduate of American University’s MFA Creative Writing program.