From slanted windows framed high

in the barn's gable end, I mind a day

the garden patch was strafed, the late

melon patch was ruined, and hickory

switches chastened the granite ledge.

Arctic slices have invaded the Yankee

breakfast of warm apple pie, sending

shivers through the pumpkin allies; the

morning's blueberries have resigned---

ruptured buckshot, jelly spread inside;

rouged sickle pears, like fodder stranded

on topmost limbs, now study the mix of

ominous trends and windward twist

---heaven bound with green bravado---

and the memory of a Summer's kiss;

as a child I once envisioned myself as

a grown man smiling down; now I

spy the orchard warrior leering back

at me in a specter of Fall recruits---he

has culled the dreamers from the resolute;

along the gravel shale paths home,

I track the mountain evening drafts,

scout firewood camps and cannon

atop the dry-stone walls; down-gully

a carbine eye has leveled its sights;

survival is the Autumn primer, the

scent of snow, the art of burrowing

neighbors, the husbandry of cabbage

and potato; how tepid seem the zero

months in a field-stone cellar hole.

In shades of far-range pastel chalk

the clover hay falls in one last cut; 

soldier boys smother in grape shot;

a young general....musters his rakes,

trails the men home, to supper call.