Golden Month

This month is like the golden hour, soft as
light will be when it comes from the horizon,
diffuse and flattering, sweetening colors like
salt improves potatoes, like laughter improves
an evening, like lavender improves a bath, like
music changes a room. Just a little more time,

please. The squirrels are frantic. Their flat
corpses in the streets show that they know
the calendar is hastening to a close. Spiders,
too, have their heyday. Cobwebs in my windows,
as broad as tulle, dress the flies for a grim
consummation. It all ends in a mock-macabre

celebration of death, as if making a show of it
will keep the real thing from coming. Skeletons
creep blindly along suburban lawns, never
closing their eyes, nor opening them to find
that the sky has stripped the trees at last,
in one final, heavy, sigh.

Photo by Kristian Seedorff on Unsplash