Goodbye Daylight

Trick - or - treat Scarecrow,
ready for . . . Halloween . . . finished with Halloween.
Also, red wheelbarrow, black currant bush & mums.
Summer giving way to fall . . . giving way to winter . . .
Light Verse
It’s just five, but it’s light like six.
It’s lighter than we think.
Mind and day are out of sync.
The dog is restless.
The dog’s owner is sleeping and dreaming of Elvis.
The treetops should be dark purple,
but they’re pink.

Here and now. Here and now.
The sun shakes off an hour.
The sun assumes its pre-calendrical power.
(It is, though, only what we make it seem.)
Now in the dog-owner’s dream,
the dog replaces Elvis and grows bigger
than that big tower

in Singapore, and keeps on growing until
he arrives at a size
with which only the planets can empathize.
He sprints down the ecliptic’s plane,
chased by his owner Jane
(that’s not really her name), who yells at him
to come back and synchronize.

~ Vijay Seshadri, b. 1954
Author of The Long Meadow


How It Happens
The sky said I am watching
to see what you
can make out of nothing
I was looking up and I said
I thought you
were supposed to be doing that
the sky said Many
are clinging to that
I am giving you a chance
I was looking up and I said
I am the only chance I have
then the sky did not answer
and here we are
with our names for the days
the vast days that do not listen to us

~ W.S. Merwin, b. 1927
Author of The Shadow of Sirius
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 2009
Poet Laureate of the United States, 2010 - 2011

two selections from the New York Times article
"Falling Back: Six poems to mark the end of daylight saving time"
~ November 2010 ~
"The treetops should be dark purple,
but they’re pink."