Cool ooze September sunlight
the afternoon downpour stopped
hard as it fell.

Early leaf rot like eyespots
to scare predators away.

Now small birds again gather chip
around the feeder.

And the sun goes down. Soon.
No longer summer.
No longer really summer.

This morning I watched
a green shimmer hummingbird
test the night cold wilt collapse
the pink flower hanging plant
the dangling vine
outside our living room window:

but by the time I said its name twice:
reverse incantation:
it was gone.

This storm sky:
grey plastic stretched thin
almost dead
like the skin on my father’s forehead
when I last time leaned over
to hospital kiss it.

John Walser’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Plume, Posit, Nimrod, North Dakota Quarterly, South Dakota Review and One Art. His manuscript Edgewood Orchard Galleries has been a finalist for the Autumn House Press Prize, the Ballard Spahr Prize and the Zone 3 Press Prize as well as a semifinalist for the Philip Levine Prize and the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award.  A four-time semifinalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize and a three-time Pushcart nominee, as well as a Best New Poets nominee and a Best of the Net nominee, John is a past recipient of the Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award. 

He is a professor of English at Marian University and lives in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, with his wife, Julie.