TWENTY WEEKS
End of Summer
Definitely a chill this morning. Edges turning up. Rounding off, deepening. What there is to wait for here is almost here. What there is of being from before is not. That is: the seasons separate, a hinge, the word that makes the sound, the sound like crickets slowing. Between one thing and another, past and present. We are not the same. What I await. Two quinces on the tree, I saw them first at night. On the chainlink, creeper reddens.
More and More
The blue moon, second one in a month but not blue, actually. A certain slackness. Well. Things take their time. Not outside anymore but in it, time. Could still be kicked out. It will out, with winter. Each move, doubled. Thinking of the beach in May, the raw clay cliffs, meltdown to the sea. Expanse and roughness. What if there’s no place for it again.
Halfway
There is what came before and now there’s after. Measured, recollected, absolutely no idea. Still the sweetness of the old, before the cleaving. A few summers that I thought would never end, pigeons in the eaves, silver sky working silently against the sunset, you thought you’d get away with it forever, being out of place and time. What a summer is, I mean, is to itself alone. Nothing can be done by halves but whatever happens has them, has to.
Friday
Getting—and as it should be—a little dry out. Sometimes I see as from above: rounded off and held, private. See how patient I am being? I ask the house, I ask the porch, I ask the shutters, I ask the clear blue sky. See how patient? I ask the storm debris, for all it knows. Chipmunk on the path almost as fast as I can see it. Underneath the crisping reddish edges—all the fear in the world but I didn’t say it like that.
TWENTY-FOUR
Maple
Cooler, cooler, dapple, dust. The dreams are here—are here, I mean, are present, reckless, unconsented. With what part of me do I, I do, I don’t, or what if every membrane, crossed, and all is known? And it takes all day to dissipate. A funny stomach drop, a veined red leaf down from a tree of green ones. A maple: sugar. Or, a maple, sugar. My kingdom for a kiss, or litheness.
Like It Is
It’s easy, though, to get too far ahead. Still green, overdressed, overheated. Mid-September can be summer still. A black squirrel with something green in his mouth. Across the lake, a tree is red all at the top. It’s the traces and the edges. Stop counting ahead, stop counting before. Except do will it to keep going. Stay right with it. Give it to me straight. Wouldn’t say a dozen when I mean nine, for example. Wouldn’t say it’s ripe yet.
Lindsay Turner
Lindsay Turner is the author of the poetry collections The Upstate and Songs & Ballads and a translator of contemporary Francophone poetry and philosophy. She lives in the poetry capital of the universe, Cleveland.