Just an open patch of ground.
The road dipped in a valley.
We had a throwing stick
for the dog’s yellow ball
and the dog looked over
her shoulder, mistaking it
for the setting autumn sun.
She chased it on the bounce.
There was an old cemetery
across the road, and rooks
that cawed from the high pines,
and larks, exhausted at sunset.
The days of light are passing
from this world. The dog wet
in a stream shook her coat dry
on us and made stars fly up.
Did the swallows abandon
the dilapidated grey barn
through which the sunlight
passed on its way to winter?
And did we leave something
of ourselves in that field,
the moment, the joy of being,
and mistake it all for heaven?
