The Day Will Come
“The day will come,”
The preacher says
And I drive home,
Through the changing maples and oaks
Thinking about a couple of jobs around the house:
Clean the brick below the shutters
Rake the last of the leaves
Especially out of that patch out back
That was supposed to have been our garden.
‘
I think of sunny October
And unseasonably warm November days
Late mornings and early afternoons
Forget the Almanac’s warnings
Those good days always come
There are always plenty of them.
‘
And they come
And I drink every yellow drop of them
Working at my own pace
T-shirt and jeans
Till the front lawn in the cool twilight
Is a clean-swept carpet
A curried slope
Its contours vivid now
With not a dry leaf to hide them
‘
And I, sun-tanned in autumn,
Rejoice and exult
In work completed
and satisfactory results
this time knowable, quantifiable, visible
and know that I will get
that garden patch in the back
next good, warm day.
‘
But, instead, November comes
Real November, this time
With floods and now snow
And the time of salvation is past.
copyright 2014
Home Economics 