THE LAST OF SUMMER

The first of September and the last of the English summer;

now the burgeoning blackberries droop on their brambles, heavily sweet,

and the birds mass on the humming lines like athletes gathered to race.

We wipe the dew from windscreens in the cobweb-heavy mornings.

Here ends a season dragged with clouds and lashed with soaking showers,

scant of picnicking and sunbathing and heatwaves spent on loungers.

Cheated of fetes and festivals, barbecues and beaches,

people pack away shorts and sandals in drawers and in high cupboards;

shove airbeds and gazebos into garages and garden sheds.

School uniforms are hemmed and pressed and laid out for the morning.

Faces turning inwards towards TV screens and sofas

consider prematurely the serious work of autumn.

The electric lights flick on in every living room and kitchen;

the evenings, like the shedding hay wagons, are intent on gathering in.