THE HUNKERING
Donald Hall
(b. 1928)

In October the red leaves going brown heap and scatter
over hayfield and dirt road, over garden and circular driveway,

and rise in a curl of wind disheveled as schoolchildren
at recess, classes just starting and summer done, winter’s

white quiet beginning in ice on the windshield, in hard frost
that only blue asters survive, and in the long houses that once

more tighten themselves for darkness and hunker down.