Elegies for Falling Leaves

The trees fall quickly but they were dead already,

Tall orders and squat machines presiding like queens—

O’er the bodies, like blue boxes of Spaghetti—

The backs straight, all stowed, stuffed slickly, the caught sardines.

Back in the day, lollies of lanky loblollys

Gathered ‘round the parking lots like kids in evening—

The Bottoms of cups: dregs of our human follies.

And in the wind, the soft needles still careening.

They watched Hansel and Gretel, the Cheshire Cat, Snow

White and Little Red pass by in prim, pressed pages.

Even now, their roots underground like hearts of Poe.

While cars crawl o’er corpses as memory ages.

But what’s an inch of water to an industry?

There’s no culmination to this education

-al crucifixion— stretching to infinity.

Give a cookie; sustain this civilization.

But in the evenings— in winter, or after a play:

The sun used to flood past their cracks, onto the cool asphalt,

(and the traffic was silent)

So you knew that you were a million miles away.