Three Days in August

On Tuesday grasshoppers,

clicking yellow brown in hot sun.

Longest swim of the season that evening,

this shallow sandy rim of the continent’s deepest lake

cool silk on my skin.

Wednesday a 25 knot northerly with cold rain,

pounding take-offs and touchdowns,

long V’s of geese riding the cold front south,

that rare thin layer of warm water pushed offshore and gone.

Thursday a scouting flight northeast

to the upper Baillie River.

Caribou there, drifting down from the coast,

crossing the border from Nunavut.

As if a border, or a map,

means anything to them.

 

All that matters to them,

to the grasshoppers and the geese,

and to me, just now,

is that summer is ending.