The Last Leaf In Autumn

Autumn has always struck me as a uniquely bitter season. All the other seasons seem to seep into one another, gradually transforming into the next, but not autumn. Autumn is very sudden. There is always a day when you realize summer is over and autumn has arrived. It strikes with a chill or a smell. Though perhaps cliche, it is like a sickness onto death. A change of color marks the coming gloom; the shedding of beauty to make way for bony, pale anatomy. One last hurrah. The flame of a dying Phoenix before the ash. 

Autumn is humbling and appears spooky even without the commercial bunkum. The wind changes its flavor, while animals thicken their skin. I think autumn is the most beautiful season because it allows us to reflect on the revelry of summer and prepare for the uncertainty of winter. It is a time of thankfulness, of appreciation, of maturity, and reflection.  

It is a gift of forgetfulness so that we may savor the sweetness of the memory. 

The Last Leaf In Autumn

I had found myself amid the rubble of a pallid forest

that had been shaved of its motley plumage.

Their proud and glorious manes lay as runners on the muddy floor;

their frail and coiled appendages did little to warm the air

as autumn gasps slithered unimpeded through them.  

The colors had all but forgotten this frozen hall

that I had worked the will to bird dog.

To this, I came upon a particular gosling of gloom:

Ruggedly profuse with tumors and twists;

the belly bent and the shoulders collapsed.

There upon a scanty digit hung a tattered leaf.

It batted and fidgeted in the autumn whisk. 

For dear life it hung,

its tiny will incessant,

its color of a cogent mustard 

with freckles and holes.

I winced in curious compassion

at this scarred and lifeless lock

flung out into the approaching cold.

I reached out my finger tip to touch it

as it swayed and danced in the torturous tide,

until its nurtured anchor was whittled down to sawdust

and sent it, lucid and inert,  

lolloping toward the ground.

My crestfallen hand fell with her,

tracing her roiling cascade,

until she met her siblings atop the blanketed grave,

to decay;

as if destined to decay.

I stood alone,

the sole witness to her fall, 

while a eulogy seemed appropriate,

but would not follow.