Summer’s End

Today I tipped the packet of coffee
into the cafetiere instead of the tin.
Caught myself in time, didn’t pour water in.

I’ve started to write notes to myself:
Shut bathroom window. Lock back door.
Yesterday at the bank I couldn’t remember

mini statement but I can recognise
this orange blur, this hover of wings
above abelia grandiflora, a hummingbird

hawk moth exploring the tube-flowers
with its long tongue. I sip my coffee.
Old age comes tapping up my garden path

on unsteady feet, but I’m content to watch
a flycatcher flitting up and back, up
and back to its perch on the fence post,

the hawk moth probing
trumpet by trumpet as it siphons
nectar’s last drops,

the flycatcher fluttering up to snatch
one more feed at summer’s end,
preparing for migration.

Sue Norton has had poems published in various magazines and anthologies.