Season of Departure

Autumn is a season of departure
Leaves are drying, turning color,
Never to be green and supple again;
Unleaving trees until they are bare.
Harvest empties fields and orchards.
Still one peach has yet to fall.

Robins abandon us 
In search of warmer climes and more insects.
Bears shuffle off to slumber chambers.
Squirrels, gathering nuts and seeds,
Feed with crows on withered corn 
And that one last peach that has yet to fall.

Children are bundled off to school.
Hay is ricked and off to market;
Cotton is baled and sent to the gin.
Migrant workers have pulled up stakes,
And move on to harvests further South,
Leaving that one peach that has yet to fall.

written October, 2009