BEFORE THE FROST, AFTER THE FROST

Before the frost 

Daylight slips steadily through the colander of time, 

while I stuff brown paper bags half-full with rusty, bug- eaten herbs,

compelled by some desperate instinct toward production and stockpiling,

unable to stop clipping and coaxing the dregs of summer. 

I spend more time now at the breakfast table, looking 

at the October parade of tired plants 

that droop under the weight of seedy headdresses.

Wasting more cups of tea than drinking,

 shifting stacks of unread books,

 scrying at undecipherable skies. 

I line the windowsills with jars like talismans 

emerald-green mugwort, dock-root brown

 and orange calendula oil glowing darkly 

against the gray march of early November. 

The frost still hasn’t come, 

but it could, they say, 

any day now. 

Scrubbed roots, chopped and garbled in little piles,

await their fate. 

Will it be the tender sorting and storing fingers, or

the prolonged journey to the compost pile?  

And since we’re asking, can you tell me:

Have I harvested enough? 

Have I absorbed enough vitamin D? 

Have we run out of coffee?  

Have I remarked upon enough sugar maple leaves? 

Who has the to-do list? 

Is there still time?

Unsure what to prepare and how, I put the teakettle on, again, 

and await some kind of instruction. 

Meanwhile 

The weaver, at the center of her web, dreams.

She waits at the dawn and the dusk and watches me move in and out of the window, 

making apocalyptic shadows fall on the dewy grass like Morse code. 

I try not to look at her as I noisily harvest the squash,

but I know she stares, with eight side-eyes, as if to say, give it over. 

After the frost 

At dawn, the flower bed is a candy store party, 

They’ve all shown up sugar coated,to pose for my camera 

in glittery leaf gowns and crystal tassel petals. 

The uniformed crickets have all but retired and no one has given a thought 

to the cleanup. 

I wonder where the weaver has hidden herself now. 

Her absence provokes new fears. 

A crow alights in the humble hush of the field

and I stoop, head bowed., one hand on the cold stone wall.

So many things will have to wait. 

A menagerie of projects, like puppies up for adoption, dream of more attentive owners. 

Raisins frozen atop the compost pile, plump and rotten.