August Into Autumn

August is the silent time.
Caroline Dormon, Bird Talk (1969)

It happens every year almost the same
And always late in August when we pause 
Just long enough to see what time has done,
Sly changes nearly imperceptible 
Moment to moment holding us at last
While molting birds gone quiet watch the stars
And summer moves to its appointed end.

The mated dragonflies, whose months are years, 
Their eggs already floating in the reeds,
Now glide more slowly over lake and blade,
The great blue skimmer, eastern amber-wing
Still hunting for mosquitoes, dusk and dawn,
But farther off as the dense swarms grow thin
And crickets call all night through cooling trees.

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—David Middleton

Image by Inlet Masu via Creative Commons. Image cropped.