Parachutes

after Lao-Tzu

How indistinct, these blurs
Yet within are pictures

The end of summer needs
An end (and so do seeds),

To cauterize, to fix
Their wounds with simple tricks:

That soft and silken hair
Which fills the meadow air

With cotton blur
Is the winter’s cure

For colder days,
Milk white thistle blaze

Rising from October’s
Painful burrs,

The barbs that hold us down
To August’s burning brown

So that, like goldenrod,
The wind plays god

With us,
The pappus

Of the world,
Cotton candy twirled

Around a soul,
The fuzzy goal

Of summer fruit,
The endless root

And lifeline of the eye:
Blowballs in the sky,

Pictures that we seize
That free and freeze

Us in the summer sun,
That let us run

Forever up the hill
By standing still,

Milkweed pods that come apart
To make some vague things start:

That stage a rout
So we can sprout.