Autumn by Sydney Lea

Autumn

Caledonia County, Vermont

Why not write something for those
who scratched out improbable livings here?
Somebody has managed to sow
This broken field with stones, it appears,.

So somebody’s scratching it still,
Although that Japanese knotweed has edged
The tilth. Two wasps in the chill
Attempt to catch sun on a rail of the bridge.

The old local doctor has passed
At almost a full decade past ninety.
I needn’t be depressed.
I’m in my seventies still, if barely.

I’m getting used to the pain
In my back, admitting it’s here to stay.
The smell in the air means rain,
Which is fine, the summer’s been much too dry.

Nothing is left of the barn
But some rusted steel straps in some nasty red osier.
The stone fence still looks sound,
But even there the knotweed steps over.

Hadn’t I pledged an elegy
To the old ones who worked here? You couldn’t claim
They thrived, exactly, but maybe
They likewise scented good wind full of rain,

Lifted eyes above this old orchard
To the cloud-darkened hills and found their strength
Somehow, somewhere. No matter,
They kept going – until they couldn’t at length.

The trees’ puckered apples have gathered
A flock of birds that, as they alight,
Are full of unseasonable chatter,
As if to say that all will be right.

The old ones I promised a poem
Must have said it too. It’ll be all right.
I never knew them. They’re gone.
I say it out loud, It’ll be all right.

Sydney Lea’s latest collection, Here, is published by Four Way Books and available here.

Learn more about Sydney on our Contributors’ Page.

(Photo: Richard Walker/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)

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Sydney Lea

A former Pulitzer finalist and winner of the Poets’ Prize, Sydney Lea served as founding editor of New England Review and was Vermont’s Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2015.He is the author of twenty-five books: a novel, five volumes of personal and three of critical essays, and sixteen poetry collections, most recently What Shines (Four Way Books, 2023). In 2021, he was presented with his home state of Vermont’s most prestigious artist’s distinction: the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.