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.
~ Jeanne Lohmann ~
