Our Pencil Gray Ways

Squirrel and I both can tell
the season’s changing.
Maybe it’s the shift in Sun’s angle
stretching shadows a little longer
during the height of our day,
inhaling what we smell
in the transformed air,
even though the still
mostly green leaves
haven’t figured out yet
it’s they who are exhaling it.

We skitter our pencil gray ways
into and out of weakening light,
sketching and scribbling maps
for future reference, preparing
for that long decline of day when
these nuggets will be all we have
to sustain us. We’ll view it all,
as we always have, safely
from our space of invisibility
here in the longest shadows,
in the cold light of moon and star,
where all we have to keep warm
will be these set aside memories
of a time in May.