A Poem for a Thursday #201

Maggie Dietz is an American poet who has served as assistant poetry editor for Slate and as director of the Favorite Poem Project. She has taught at Boston University and the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. According to the Poetry Foundation “When reading Dietz’s poems, one can often sense an aperture widening or constricting as she deftly engages the movement of light and shadow across natural and human cycles.”

Show's over, folks. And didn't October do
A bang-up job? Crisp breezes, full-throated
     cries
Of migrating geese, low-floating coral moon.

Nothing left but fool's gold in the trees.
Did I love it enought, the full-throttle foliage,
While it lasted? Was I dazzled? The bees

Have up and quit their last-ditch flights of 
     forage
And gone to shiver in their winter clusters.
Field mice hit the barns, big squirrels gorge

On busted chestnuts. A sky like hardened 
     plaster
Hovers. The pasty river, its next of kin,
Coughs up reed grass fat as feather dusters.

Even the swarms of kids have given in 
To winter's big excuse, boxed-in allure:
TVs ricochet light behind pulled curtains. 

The days throw up a closed sign around four.
The hapless customer who'd wanted something 
Arrives to find lights out, a bolted door. 

November
Maggie Dietz