This age-old waning of the sun
has come for eons over this same view:

Mountains slowly smaller over millennia,
the sun, by fractions and particles,
smaller too. 

all the tiny silences
that have made up, thus far, the giant silence of the universe.

I don’t aspire to tirelessness.

Let me sometimes

come down
to rest.

The land belongs solely to itself, and we belong to the land, all of us here beneath the wide-brimmed bowl of sky.

No one gave permission

to the last mushroom of the season

to be this plucky,

A canny one, the desert. She knows how to call my name.

Final moonslice of the year
shines here. Time has come, the year grown round.

So summarize the seasons past:

Yes, give them to me. Bring them to my park entrances, huddled and tired and poor, and let them breathe free.

But do not fear: I know they’re not yearning to breathe too free. Let them remain a little huddled. Keep them within a half-mile radius of a Ranger Station and Gift Shoppe at all times…

Upon the hem of Ajax there is sun.


Your azure deep extends toward the west

where rising tempest makes its windy run

against the valley. Mountainside, I rest…