It is fall now, the crops are in
Save one or two cotton fields
Still waiting to be harvested.
They appear like precursors
Of winter to come.
As if some storm dropped snow
Here and here and here only.

My friend from Iowa always said
She hated this time of year,
That it made her think of death.
She resonates with the new buds of spring
The lush abundance of summer
Not for her, the bare limbs
And empty fields of fall.

I have learned to love this time of year.
The earth seems to breathe a sigh of relief.
The burden of the crop removed,
The land rests and recovers
From the stringent demands
Placed upon it by a hungry world.

Everything seems bigger now,
The horizon farther away.
The November sky is high
And wide and clear.
The lowering clouds of winter have not yet
Come to close us in.

I lived here four months
Before I ever saw my neighbors house
On the other side of the corn field.
Now, we smile and wave at one another
Across the empty ground.
She hangs her sheets on a clothes line too.