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| Andrew Wyeth |
On Parting
It's over you know, the summer's over.
Clouds of dust as the last vehicle went out.
A jeep hauling a small boat on a trailer
Through the dust of the grey country road.
Patterns of tires, patterns of cast leaves
Printed in ashen dust
The next day clouds of snow, the crumbled sky
Falling and settling on the trees
Of the bare abandoned forest.
They have all returned to the city, while I remain
Sorting my summer notebooks:
Drawings of tender plants begun in the spring
Pressings of leaves
Which are prints of tough early autumn, before
The rot comes that thickens
The floor of the woods.
And what lies beneath the snow, the needle duff?
Cities of pebbles and crushed shells,
Kingdoms of beetles, republics of worms,
Forest of hyphae, tangled mycelium,
Roots of trees coming upon each other
In the dark.
Anne Zumigalski
"It's over, you know." Zumigalski is talking about summer - but these days I can't help but feel this poem's broader sense. Life has changed in such a way these last months that seems to mark a definitive "before" and "after", a change of season. What new weather will come, I don't know. I sit here, like the speaker in the poem, "sorting my summer notebooks", thinking over what I have heard and seen and experienced, wondering what it means, and how it will carry me through what is to come.
It's over you know, the summer's over.
Clouds of dust as the last vehicle went out.
A jeep hauling a small boat on a trailer
Through the dust of the grey country road.
Patterns of tires, patterns of cast leaves
Printed in ashen dust
The next day clouds of snow, the crumbled sky
Falling and settling on the trees
Of the bare abandoned forest.
They have all returned to the city, while I remain
Sorting my summer notebooks:
Drawings of tender plants begun in the spring
Pressings of leaves
Which are prints of tough early autumn, before
The rot comes that thickens
The floor of the woods.
And what lies beneath the snow, the needle duff?
Cities of pebbles and crushed shells,
Kingdoms of beetles, republics of worms,
Forest of hyphae, tangled mycelium,
Roots of trees coming upon each other
In the dark.
Anne Zumigalski
"It's over, you know." Zumigalski is talking about summer - but these days I can't help but feel this poem's broader sense. Life has changed in such a way these last months that seems to mark a definitive "before" and "after", a change of season. What new weather will come, I don't know. I sit here, like the speaker in the poem, "sorting my summer notebooks", thinking over what I have heard and seen and experienced, wondering what it means, and how it will carry me through what is to come.
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