Mary Oliver: "Fall Song"

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries—roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay—how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.



"Fall Song" by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Little, Brown and Company, 1983.  

Art credit: "Fallen acorns in autumn at Wistmans Wood," image by unknown photographer presented by bbc.co.uk.