Pastorals

By Rachel Hadas

By noon, now in mid-September, tall shadows are already looming, dark and melodramatic, striping the lawn and garden. Friendly ghosts remain, but most of the guests have receded, each taking with them a jar of applesauce to taste or inhale and remember. Or to give away. Emptier, the house seems both bigger and smaller. A cycle fills with stillness. Silence grows on the trees. These last mornings I put on the rubber boots I bought at Morrison's Feed Bag, the crimson boots imprinted with yellow chickens, and head out across the cold wet spiderweb-spangled grass toward the Duchess tree. "May something always go unharvested," wrote Robert Frost. Almost everything goes unharvested. I pick an apple up and take a bite.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1939574390
• ISBN13: 9781939574398
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Measure Press Inc.
• Length: 88 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"