The Last Day of September On the last day of September, I open the window. The swallows have gone now, fled towards sunnier places, leaving behind the quiet evidence of summer in the barn rafters: the nests, the feathers, the small, intimate architecture of a family that was here and is no longer. Their absence seems louder than their coming ever was. I open the blinds. Across the cropped cornfield, a deer is running. Just one, sudden and beautiful, crossing the stubble with