An Occasion

In the late afternoon
autumn’s sun still warm,
in the eastern sky a hazy moon,
cornfields reaching from farm to farm,
at a picnic table among dry leaves
caught, you and I, in the net time weaves
day after day to enmesh all those
we know yet we stay more than friends
in this hamburger world with its paper rose
and struggle to cope with its odds and ends
and bear our capture without mocking to say
tomorrow today will be yesterday.