VIII

By Wendell Berry

The sky bright after the summer-ending rain,

I sat against an oak half up the climb.

The sun was low; the woods was hushed in shadow;

Now the long shimmer of the crickets' song

Had stopped. I looked up to the westward ridge

And saw the ripe October light again,

Shining through leaves still green yet turning gold.

These glowing leaves made of the light a place

That time and leaf would leave. The wind came cool,

And then I know that I was present in

The long age of the passing world, in which

I once was not, now am, and will not be,

And in that time, beneath the changing tree,

I rested in a keeping not my own.