POEM:
Again the time has come for you
to call me from my book
and help put order
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on the fallen leaves.
Before we can consign them
to bags or compost bin
there is the raking and sweeping
into heaps, an orderly array
which even as we pause for breath
becomes again a scattered
plaything of the wind that wilfully
comes calling from the river.
How mundane yet strange
this suburban ritual we share
with the darkening days,
a rite which you initiate each year
as though instinctively
to join a dance
of sweepers
and the swept
tuned to the absolute
embrace of days
beyond all of our
imagining or ways.
