Staying Put

for a north Louisiana harvest home
Eccle. 1:9

Late autumn dusk, the hock-cart drawing near,     
The time of year and day becoming one                
As all that I have thought and seen has done
In ways I made my own by staying here:

The purple asters rising toward an end           
Under the stars whose given name they bear,  
The sky and ground so close together there,                         
With pansies for remembrance in a wind             

Chilling young sparrows pecking seeded grass,            
Bringing a season they have never known,
While led by older geese the geese press on
In southbound wedges homing as they pass.    

And right below the stars and moon and sun,                   
The same that shone on Greece and Christendom, 
I’ve come to see this place from which I come         
By my own lights now time is all but done,

Still staying put where I was put to stay,
The only way to go to find The Way.