Time Being: Lakeside, after Leaving Our Youngest at College

Again the curlew calls its name. 
Where we’ve camped over years, 
the sky has already distanced itself 
from the heat press of summer, 
the lakeshore fluent 
with ridges only seasons of water can scroll. 

What brims toward voice between us 
does not verge yet into spill. 
The quiet grows . . . less hollow 
in mountains than home on the plateau. 
The shift of shoreline along the north 
is coded by wind and currents 
hidden as the braille undersides of fern. 
As always the forecast will call for 
our own weather of acclimation. 

We’ve not been here in fall. 
The water flares with beauty 
edged in iron. Whatever cue 
the leaves receive, who can tell what will come 
from their turn toward true colors. 
Our own veined arms sense 
we might not come again to this spot 
where now in slant autumn light 
what we most notice is a curlew’s cry. 

As dusk begins to spread 
from beneath the trees, we watch 
a wide-spanned falcon with no wing movement 
vanish into the next scene.