— By Lee Ki-chul
Meaning to taste just one, to see if it had ripened,
the sunlight spilled across the whole field before it left
In October, katydids and crickets cry out
to be taken along
Sunlight you could eat all of, not just one. Spring, the season for seeing; summer, the season fruit comes forth; autumn, the season there is much to gather — sunlight had a hand in all of it. Sunlight that took half a year to drop a single stroke, turning April into October. Sunlight that set the whole field rolling gold, then backed away south of the latitude. Sunlight that says no matter how loudly they cry, it has no side to tuck a katydid or a cricket under. Sunlight that says the mystery of a life is that no one gets to open its last page. Sunlight that will burn hot over the islands of the South Pacific, then come back, slowly, slowly, as the light of spring. Sunlight that will take another six months to put the stroke back on October — hero of this abundant autumn, farewell, then.