All the swifts are gone. No matter how long
you scan the dusk, they’ve vanished overnight.
Set your sights lower: eyeball to eyeball
with dragonflies. In brisk vacillation
of glassy wings, glimpse a jewelled turning.
Warm yourself. Level out. Let windows yawn,
for slowly – like a sigh – the year exhales,
ripens into shape. Its skin hardening.
Fructidor: the season of scratched forearms.
Juice-stained fingers pick grass from cycle gears,
burrs cling to footwear after foraging.
Love, time now to re-weave our rambling rose.
Show me where, in August’s shortening light,
I should cut away the weary deadwood.
ix. 2024
