Falling and falling from the once living trees,
Green leaves gone ocher, then gone brown;
Life’s coming down and soon will come to naught;
Death and dismemberment at every turn,
The wind brings cold and makes day dark as night
And every living thing succumbs to it;
I, myself, am tempted to give in
To the unrelenting gale’s intent to end.
Surely the world is coming to its end;
If all trees die, what living thing can stand?
I see – it is a vision! – that coyote
That earlier this summer came to plague
My cousin foxes, laying them to waste
‘Til none remained but in my memory,
And then he disappeared but now returns,
A giant howling in the growing dark.
I see a dead leaf coiled into a funnel,
Striped like a seashell to its tapered end,
Through which the last life will pour to nothingness.
What else can this terrible autumn wind portend?
