The Persephone Period

You have to wait.

You have to wait until

July has left and August is

gone, too, those months

in which we never think

to gather anything, instead being

just in the haze and bee-swarm days

so each autumn surprise slams

us with its bitter, its end of asters

and sedum and numbs with its brown

until the dog tries to find the toad

it harassed all summer and in doing so

crunches the dead leaves which are finally

so dry they are almost tiny bells

ringing with seeds and underneath that cold

is the memory we forgot to have in July,

which is the silent growth and bloom now

beckoning and we have waited long

enough. We can shake the chive chaff from

the seeds and, too, find the milkweed for next

summer’s monarchs and slide a closed fist up

the long stem of each liriope holding then

in a flattened palm the future green, not yet

alive but already imaging that warm earth,

that future summer self who will not remember.