Autumn apocalypse

by Ed Higgins

Beneath maples, oaks, and birches
an autumn apocalypse empties unruly brightness
onto lawns, sidewalks, the shoulders of watchers
and passers by. Whole drifts of madder yellow,
reds, and earth browns loosed to mould and
the gardener’s insufficient rake. By twos, twenties,
more, November jolted branches loose their color.
It is summer’s final uncoiling, fall’s harsh rhetoric
of leaf upon leaf let down, turning apex, flat margin,
base, serrated edges, settling, scattered to ground into
mellifluent lost syntax. Branch, trunk, and root hoard
only green memory now.