What Marks the Spot

The last of the summer flies
buzz and spin on the window sill.
Their evasion of months of cobwebs
and fan blades have earned them
this much. A final hurrah at the warped
pains, the manic whir of their magnetic
wings; they will drop like anise seeds
and dry into caskets of lint in the light
of late November. They suspected the air
outside was warmer when it wasn't.
Heat as only a factor of magnification.
It is the physic of glass, sun, and angle
which matters. It is the physics of memory
which lies.
As the belladonna casts off
her batik scarves the fields outside
wash to ochre, umber, sienna, sepia,
dun– sash weights ripen inside the walls–
the knocking heard from within. Outside
the harvest's opulence of gourd and blackberry
is revealed by the naked black limbs
of the trees gesture to the lovers
walking their dog up the grass hill where
there is an acorn tree and a hundred
and sixty degree view. The portrait of a city seen.
Knotted like the tails of kites,
trails of smoke rise from the riverbank suburbs
The radio tower's aerials blink
their single red eyes, and above them,
the contrails of jets seem
to spell something–