Afternoons

• summer is fading
• the leaves fall in ones and twos
• from trees bordering
• the new recreation ground
• in the hollows of afternoons
• young mothers assemble
• at swing and sandpit
• setting free their children
• behind them, at intervals
• stand husbands in skilled trades
• an estateful of washing
• and the albums, lettered
• our wedding, lying
• near the television:
• before them, the wind
• is ruining their courting places
• that are still courting places
• (but the lovers are all in school)
• and their children, so intent on
• finding more unripe acorns
• expect to be taken home
• their beauty has thickened
• something is pushing them
• to the side of their own lives
• Author: Philip Larkin