Sixtieth Summer

Still the spiralling seasons draw me on.

But since the shears must snap and my time stop

sometime, might a tolerable month be June?

—with the rose light in the hedges to lift or droop

over the fields of daisy and buttercup,

freshness, clearness of spring not quite gone

in the long siesta of summer’s afternoon.

With that ahead, might I be content to sink,

letting it dull my ears against the song

of siren autumn?—which listened to, I’m done,

caught in the cycle again of seasonal longing,

winter’s bare truths, soft, sweet strength of spring,

till chesnut-blossom scattering heralds again

the hedge-rose and the solstice’s return.