Late in the season the world digs in, the fat blossoms 
hold still for just a moment longer.   
Nothing looks satisfied, 
but there is no real reason to move on much further: 
this isn’t a bad place;   
why not pretend 

we wished for it? 
The bushes have learned to live with their haunches.   
The hydrangea is resigned 
to its pale and inconclusive utterances. 
Towards the end of the season 
it is not bad 

to have the body. To have experienced joy 
as the mere lifting of hunger   
is not to have known it   
less. The tobacco leaves   
don’t mind being removed 
to the long racks—all uses are astounding 

to the used. 
There are moments in our lives which, threaded, give us heaven— 
noon, for instance, or all the single victories 
of gravity, or the kudzu vine, 
most delicate of manias, 
which has pressed its luck 

this far this season. 
It shines a gloating green. 
Its edges darken with impatience, a kind of wind. 
Nothing again will ever be this easy, lives 
being snatched up like dropped stitches, the dry stalks of daylilies   
marking a stillness we can’t keep.