Insistent south wind sending swirls down the road. Locust almost bare. Same for the sugar maple, and Vi's magnificent crab. Big ash out back long gone. The front yard birch has turned yellow and is beginning to shed, and the three white oaks have turned brown. And all this without a frost.

The grass, however, is lush and green.

The Bluet" by James Schuyler

And is it stamina
that unseasonably freaks
forth a bluet, a
Quaker lady, by
the lake? So small,
a drop of sky that
splashed and held,
four-petaled, creamy
in its throat. The woods
around were brown,
the air crisp as a
Carr's table water
biscuit and smelt of
cider. There were frost
apples on the trees in
the field below the house.

The pond was still, then
broke into a ripple.

The hills, the leaves that
have not yet fallen
are deep and oriental
rug colors. Brown leaves
in the woods set off
gray trunks of trees.

But that bluet was
the focus of it all: last
spring, next spring, what
does it matter? Unexpected
as a tear when someone
reads a poem you wrote
for him: 'It's this line
here.' That bluet breaks
me up, tiny spring flower
late, late in dour October.