No birds
and except for these last few
disconsolate grey-blue
New England asters
no colour either

    withered leaves hanging now
    - rags on stick stems
    ground turned iron underfoot
    my face a cold-mask
    spilling hoary breath
    and fingers long since gone
    numb on the secateurs...

But the heavy dun sky
which all day menaced
with lowering cloud
as I gathered dead cuttings
now in the west slowly brightens
shot with brandy rose
and the warmth in that glow
suffuses my face

Up past the house from which
fragrant curling woodsmoke drifts
skirl over furrows of a gutted field
dark specks
a flock of late-migrant blackbirds

Rippling they shift
like wind and ascend
drawn as one supple
particulate billow to roost
in the high forked
crown of a naked maple.