Autumn

Autumn sluggishly unfurls her canopy, pace by pace.
Slowly encrusting the fresh-green forest in a tawny embrace.
I see a handful of bronzed leaves glide
Ceremoniously, in the final journey to their forbearers' side.
There, on the damp ground, they shuffle and hustle,
Trampling upon each other's brittle texture in frantic bustle.
To bask one last time in the sun's melting rays
Whose waxing brevity heralds the advent of wintry days.

As the autumnal hue embrace successive trees,
It disperses from boughs all dying leaves
Which gather and compound on the soggy ground
Bellowing cacophony of heart-rending sound.
There, far bellow, they decompose and merge
Into the ground, dispatched by paternal purge
Lacking compunction or moral pangs
Platoons of offspring, most brittle though young.
Seasonal corpses, brittle, on the ground lie
Nurturing the paternal bedrock even as they die.