At Dyke Marsh at Dusk in Fall

Walk out a crooked boardwalk, water slapping on the underplanks,
Walk out into this wetland marsh in fall, its gilding grass and cattails
Tall as you or taller, see a careless, autumn moon
Strolling in the nimbus,
Its jangled brace of light is sprawled across
The field of grass. And further out, the river
Idles in the dark and on the other bank
Somewhere north behind the trees
A city’s shrieking in its capitol teeth.
 
One hundred years ago or less
Or more when time was inessential,
As the moon just slipped behind that cloud
So water overcame the bank
And inundated land, and water,
Grass and foliage conspired
To form this wetland marsh
For pickerelweed and Orioles,
Beavers, black duck and Arrow Arum,
Swamp shrub, osprey, wrens,
For pumpkin ash,
Sparrows, spatterdock and cattails
That graze the breeze at night in fall.

You might wish to be wanted there,

For the night to tell you its secrets,  
For the moonlight to gather up into itself
The form of a girl you might once have loved
Who walks into the shallows and
Out of her dress
And waits for you there in the shadows and grasses

But just like that its gone again,

The moon, behind a bank of coming winter sky,
As if she turned her back on you.
Whatever glory there is
In water, reeds, cattails, sky,
Implacable sky,
Conceals itself as in a shawl,
Shuts you out, shares nothing at all
Says nothing to you at the Dyke Marsh at dusk in fall.