Afternoon

The day stretches out
in the afternoon,

beneath the sun.
Short shadows lengthen too,
everything seems to reflect
the bright sun,
the wind picks up
and every green thing dances
beneath the sun.
Bees and flies
untiringly work the flowers,
but human work slows
into a rhythm of labor,
toward quitting time
toward evening.
The day almost seems
to pause in the afternoon
as if the sun would just stop
in the sky forever,
but the shadows testify
moving eastward, stretching
outward, longer
toward the evening
that will come.