WHERE SHADE COMES DOWN

In a field of sun-bleached

green, of browning leaves,

one tree, an oak, and corn

stretching to all sides away

and above the sun, cut by

swallows, a dark hawk gliding,

a woman, my wife, beside me,

bees ochering about us,

beneath us flattened grass,

showy purple asters, goldenrod,

our blue shadows lost in

weeds and the branching darkness

beneath which we lie,

muted, earthen, neither

white nor colorless.