The goldenrod blooms in the August heat

Rolling ribbon of flaming floral light;

Monarchs on the milkweed rest wings and feet,

The sloped sun signals summer’s slow-born night

For which the fawn-brown spider’s spinning

Her web betwixt an elm-tree’s knotted limbs,

Beside the highway, on which one’s speeding;

Strange thoughts wax uncanny as daytime dims.

Past the verge squat homes: clapboard, low and plain,

Silvered barns and fence-posts, and rusting trucks—

The cosy and exotic sought in vain

Scanning map and memory without luck.

The screen-door up the gravelled path

Is a lawn and a universe away;

A fear of real or otherworldly wrath

Makes the driver to in their auto stay.

Clumsy boots crunching the road-shoulder’s stone,

Wandering to Somewhere in the gathering gloam;

Headlights snatch a spectre, wispy and lone,

As if a ghost were thumbing her way home.