asters like lace tatted across my yard lavender & white, pinheads of the not yet bloomed raining, not raining, this cool gray day loiters, late summer, not quite fall I sit wrapped in an autumn-colored plaid wool blanket not ready to latch the storms, light the boiler, admit that summer’s winding down, winter’s drawing close fifty to forty to frost, how what greens flowers, seeds, so swiftly blackens I rub stalks to scatter seed — mullein, bladderwort hollyhock — may they settle deep, take hold burst forth in next year’s cavalcade