September 21

Dusk leans in to the porch as we talk this anniversary night.
A cricket quietly mans the railing, as if he too were taking a moment

away from the kids and phone and all the cricket world’s white
noise and sitting on the silent rail of the moment. Clouds once pink

with end of day excitement have settled to the gray of river stones.
Later it will rain. Already the fresh breeze on the front’s other side

is banging the screen door of the abandoned house next to us.
Tomorrow the new season will walk in, confounded, wondering

who left the place and why, why they couldn’t wait for cooler
weather to prevail. On a thin boat of thought I push us away

from this container of emptiness to emptiness itself,
pointing out your heavenly body in the silt of the star river.

There is a cricket manning the oars and he will serenade us as well,
if he is still alive when we anchor just past the equinox.