no wonder the leaves go away

it didn't come in blood-baked apples nor was it pinched into an orange waist quite the opposite it wore only pants and breathed a tired river through the day sitting on its hands as mild as the chimes checkered by the windowframes and making only little reminder peals sit down it said to me but i saw it slanted dangerously to the red corrosion of the sunset burning in flashes of horsehair sit down and write the colors of summer before it is autumn splashing in the light and the day made the clash of a cooking district in a city so i knew the time i had by evening the leaves were free and uprooted from the endless mundane freedoms of long legs kept safe and on fingersnaps and indigo naps on dusk's dizzy crumbled lot grown fat but now they embrace steps that will make them grand and theatricalities scripted for them by God they have puppeteers with arms around their accordion waists and they hang their gypsying feet on walls to finger-paint proclaiming we feel the frailty of our archetypes already and we have not even begun to burn houses nor to tremble at fire we cannot be red-faced yet we have not begun embarrassing ourselves we are still measuring out the steps that lead to dramatic entrances and exits and their wrists are pinched in oranges and yellows while their life-electricity fizzes in their restless beds they turn over and over until they lie on the exhausted grass spears like the sickness named fall which couldn't blow summer away but watched the stooping age grow library-wise and then become the lean of the trees but fall made the searching and clutching begin in the wild fires and ryebread complaints of birds becoming bored with northern skies and soon the leaves that played their gypsy feet on traveled sidewalks will be fully uprooted and no more search for copper pennies in the wind but find joy in their music the last legs of daylight pulse and on salty laps and cabaret traps grow fat the witches are coming the leaves cross their feet they have steps they remember they have stairs and won't search for the living among the tiny urban bare toes because they know they will be in their heaven when no longer shaking on their stems they tell me this so i won't wonder when their springs wind up and they must go somewhere the death named fall came not shining through a pumpkin skin but in this climactic shirtless green decision .