everyone
knows what happens next,
the leaves leave tree,
the season seasons me
to prepare for frost
and shrinking, whilst playing
hopscotch with the fallen,
their colours bright, uneven and
unlike death, but being dead all the same.
how can autumn colour hue so clearly
be about the end of things when
the cycle continues
with or without us?
The leaves are not lonely dark
like the evenings,
they are bright like the fire
in our bellies. how can this
be the end of something?
how can this be the feeling
that returns year after year?
bright death is not new,
except when it becomes memory
of autumns behind us —
always ending something
without finding a beginning elsewhere.
I only wait for spring, for buds
of something else and new
and never seen before,
except for those other springs we
can barely remember yet.