Beginning Autumn

by Jeanne Lohmann

On the porch in September a brown spider in its web. There are deaths that come so quietly. Over the mountains, the half moon rising. Behind the fence a neighbor's dog howls in the dark. No matter what the poet says a yellow leaf asks nothing. The green wail of spring is what I want. When you follow the shoreline out of sight, I listen to ocean in an empty shell. I never intended my life to turn out this way. How solitary the drifting boat on the water.