A Long Death

The leaves that hover
between the trees
Cooked and burning out
Crunchy husks caught
In invisible nets
Spider’s spirals of silk and sun
Holding strong
through sheets of rain
Warm and welcome
as summer drains out
from hot into fall
And it is fall now
With webs in reflection
Shining out in the morning dew
Round the crimson, rust and
wrung out life
of a million dying leaves
And their smell so forlorn and
The forest inside
when the fingers of the trees
line the woodland floor with
Crinkled, sullen souls