In the end it is too much, and we

are glad when the pigweed flames

to purple, and the wild asters

shrivel and die at the hoar-frost’s

touch. The sky at noon is bluer

and deeper than the eye can see.

Caught between window and screen,

the summer’s flies crumble to dust,

and in the cellar, the spiders dream

and drowse toward the long sleep.

Burton Hatlen’s poems have appeared in his book “I Wanted to Tell You” and a CD, “Burt Hatlen Reads His Poetry,” as well as periodicals. He is a professor of English at the University of Maine.