At the Wheel of the Year by Elizabeth Raby, Poem

The leg scratch of crickets sounds
from drying sage. Thunder rolls
from white clouds out of the west.
Wind on her summer burnt arms
is a soft stroking, neither warm nor cool.
This is the time of the singing moon.

One angry shrank of a jay.
In uncharacteristic silence,
a chickadee eats seed. Day-lily
leaves yellow, dry seed stalks
rattle, burrs wait for the unwary.

Orange butterflies have curled their tongues
back from rich purple blossoms of buddleia,
sit of pink sandstone, open and close their wings –
Satiation? Thanksgiving? Farewell? They rest.
At a signal in butterfly they rise together
into the breeze, beat their way back
to their purpose banquet.

All around is abundance, bloom, seed,
sun and breeze, cloud and sky,
mountain and green meadow,
orange zinnia, purple aster, yellow goldenrod.
Larvae wriggle in the watery hollow of a rock.
The world does sing, then holds its breath
in the final moment before the cold comes down.