Autumn

Breaking 

Breaking down -- flailing leaf corpses

Proclaim the ragged, wind-torn sky

They rustle word of burgeoning degradation

Breaking through --

Darkening craggy raw above

Warning that light grows precious

Blackwinged croaking, cloaking tumble

Above revealed twiggy homes

Splayfingered masters of winter's turbulence

Behold the restless ragged dome

A billowing, corvine miscellany

And all about, the swirling clamour of the fall

Despairing adrift to earth

Stirred and slowed by the air's febrile decree

Of choiceless, months-long retreat

Now dusk's mantle calms a little

This restlessness of change

The day hangs suspended

Still twitching, still swaying

On the string of equinoctial unease

Look up! Look up 

This simple, hungry act of love

Of everything around me

For its eternal joy exceeds my time here

And this moment -- 

This unrepeatable now --

Islands a stone in the necklace of one life.