Fourteen Ways of Looking at Fall Foliage

Fourteen Ways of Looking at Fall Foliage

I.
Nature emblazoned.
An unguttering, golden-orange torch
Mitigating the lengthening nights.

II.
Beacon to New England.
A regional tourist trap
Sprung by a shortage of chlorophyll.

III.
The outdoors brought online.
Photographic alchemy uploaded,
The transient rendered eternal.

IV.
Splendid deciduous calendars.
October oaks counting down
The days remaining until Halloween.

V.
Gloriously performative.
Furnishing a synonym for the season
In silent, scattershot descent.

VI.
Unabashed divesting.
The methodically discarded apparel
Of exhibitionist boughs.

VII.
Democratic in downfall.
Rolling out a red carpet
That anyone can walk.

VIII.
Cemetery lethargy.
Leaves lying like scratchy blankets
Drawn over cold sleepers.

IX.
Rain-pasted to windshields.
Clinging to the hope of mobility,
Driven by autumnal wanderlust.

X.
Dead but wind-borne.
Brittle skittering across macadam
Like insect carapaces animated.

XI.
Absent yet manifest.
Colorful trefoil ghost-prints
Recorded on concrete.

XII.
Omnipresent models.
Originals of the plastic facsimiles
Decoratively strewn across harvest tables.

XIII.
Late-season heaps.
Sizable shapes like fairy mounds.
Front lawns given an eldritch hint.

XIV.
Fiery pile ignited.
Like proleptic pyres
For the waning year.

Originally published in Autumn Lauds: Poems for the Halloween Season