Twelve Round Fruit

Above the Elizabeth River, the sky boils 
           red and orange, fiery as the flames 
that have rained all year through the world.
          This we can call beautiful, before it fades
in a flash, swallowed by the throat of universal
          night. Around the neighborhood, sweep 
of streets carpeted with dry pine needles. 
          Students not yet back to crowd campus—
I like the tentative quiet of this interval, this small 
          cup at the end of the year filling with odds 
and ends of insect sound and the airhorn of 
          an occasional tugboat. On the counter,
I arrange a bowl of twelve round fruit, their cheeks 
         full and their skins firm: may the year be like them.