Threshing Fall

Autumn sun, the burnisher of leaves,
is poured in flora veins and flushes forth
colours that are the light's pinnacle phase;
the seamless trace of its transforming graze,
untouchable, its exposure, and the shades
show where they weren't pierced, where leaves still are green
but on the same tree whose top is apocalypse.

Autumn wind, the banisher of leaves,
billows up branches, displays the blue beyond,
and as it further pocks the canopies,
comes with speech extended for the other fronds
of flames, portends them stricken on candles
like spectral sputtering ember-tonsils,
fluttering in jack-o-lanterns' fat gaping mouths.

The loosening of the leaves' last frail handles,
thus plucked, are grafted onto wind at night:
leaves' freewheel trails that take up the spirals
which they fill with their deaths and cause to burn.
The banished leaves set aflame their banisher;
set invisibility aflame,
in free air burn, in night air burn, above
the ground, in spiral wakes and ploughing droves.

Autumn cold, the desiccator of leaves,
sets into their beatified matter,
sets them for shattering; sets, sets, sets,
and leaves the matter bereft, for the coming
greater cold, the whiter, burning cold.