Overnight in my wheelbarrow,
in a bitter reverse alchemy,
the golden skins of pumpkins filled
with lead, but I still cart them around.

Between their curved sides
there is room for my small bundle
of joys, neat as a stem-green
toothbrush and change of underwear.

We push past the dogwood tree
near the house where red berries,
braving winter like beautiful vain girls
in hot-colored jackets, cluster.

Later I shell black turtle beans,
a usual pleasure, plucking the perfect
obsidian seeds from papery husks,
but today on the porch, they menace.  

In the gray last days of summer,
clouds with the gravity of Jupiter
sit low, turning nimble fingers
into ingots of base metal, obscuring sunlight.