Fall

The trees are blushing. They hesitatingly slip

Out of their emerald lace; at the behest of

The grinning, adulterous wind, discard

These flaming leaves which then

Melt into gold and indolent green

And dark grape and then back again, and

Crunch in murmuring protest as you walk over them

In necrophilic delight.

A lonely squirrel bounds from branch

To branch in impartial and impersonal curiosity,

Unknowingly helps a particularly shy tree –

Startles the boy and girl

Sitting beneath to laughter, and the girl rests her elbow on the boy's shoulder

In thoughtless mirth.

How beautiful you are in death, year. How

I begrudged you your bloom, and how I am

Moved by your

Falling façade in your infirmity.

How the freshly-trimmed verdurous growth of your youth is

Covered now in splotchy splashes of unkempt colour; your beard shall

Soon be powdery grey.

You shall, in short order,

Retire to rest in your ivory tower,

And a bloodless blanket of a pins-and-needles inertia shall

Creep up like cobwebs upon the world.

And then, you shall die.

Through the long, unfertile months of

The coldly quiet sorrow that follow,

I shall remember your playful maidenhood.

Your childish flirtations, and

Your spidery promises.

I shall keep vigil, love. I shall gaze upon your shroud

From my lonely lit window, and

You shall live in my honey-lined daydreams –

Until we meet again, next summer.

And under the sticky, scented sun of an Indian afternoon,

You and I shall sit and play and talk.

…

Until it is time for you to die again.