Summer’s Almost Over Now…

The Brook’s Children in 1901 or 2 on Cobbett’s Pond. Photograph of Harold Brooks.

Summer’s nearly over now:
Apples blush, heavy, on bending branches;
Heatbugs rasp and saw
Through goldenrod endless afternoons.

Later crickets clatter,
Stitching warm darkness with thin strings of sound.

In the bushes a hundred fireflies
Flitter and fade, pointing the night
With silent white flashes…

…Long shadows in the afternoon;
Peaches yellow in mellow sunshine;
Squash brilliant and bumpy on market stalls;
And the occasional early pumpkin.

Evenings are cooler, nights longer;
Summer’s almost over now. W.H.M