Sunday Haiku

{Photos by rocketlass.}

Last night as I bicycled down Damen Avenue, I was surprised by the honking of geese overhead, long after they should have been bedded down for the night. By the time we got to our destination, I was working on this haiku:

Geese in formation
Honk to announce September
Where did summer go?

Then there's this version, which adds what I noticed on my run in the park this afternoon:

Geese in formation
And leaves crunching underfoot:
September has come.

All of which reminds me of Wendell Berry--whose unwavering attention to the changes on the land is a model for us all--and in particular of this stanza, from the 1991 installment of his Sabbath poems,collected in A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems, 1979-1997 (1998):

Autumn ripens the corn.
You pick the yellow ears,
Carry them from the field,
Rich, satisfying loads.
The garden's final yield
Now harvested, the ground
Worked and manured, prepared
For spring, put out of mind,
You must saw, split, bring in,
And store your winter wood.
And thus the year comes round.