Do Not Expect

Do not expect that if your book falls open to a certain page, that any phrase you read will make a difference today, or that the voices you might overhear when the wind moves through the yellow-green and golden tent of autumn, speak to you. Things ripen or go dry. Light plays on the dark surface of the lake. Each afternoon your shadow walks beside you on the wall, and the days stay long and heavy underneath the distant rumor of the harvest. One more summer gone, and one way or another you survive, dull or regretful, never learning that nothing is hidden in the obvious changes of the world, that even the dim reflection of the sun on tall, dry grass is more than you will ever understand. And only briefly then you touch, you see, you press against the surface of impenetrable things.