as sunlight caves to evening

and gnats descend and embers cool

for the industry we once held

strong as a towering oak, and hale

as any granite peak under snow

as if naught would ever fall, nothing fall

nor bone crumble to dust.

So full, so full our veins have been

in lavish fields of amaranth

of a May that dared to seem so fair

and never to trouble, never,

as on we rared aglare in glee

and dashed our clocks to the burgeoning ground

laughing and charging and weaving about

just on the cusp of bloom.

So rare, so rare the flesh becomes

stacked in the towers of bustle and charm

while documents pile and rockpiles slide

and no one remembers the crown

was once an achievement and once was a groom

ruddy and full-cheeked and terribly spry,

now thin as a web, thin as a web

this November afternoon.

So shorn, so shorn, the leaf cracks in two

and lets an aroma of drywood and grain

as rain falls and mud runs and all the pretty hair

seems murkily mattedly one,

and streams run together and the leaf joins the others

that once were their sisters through membrane and branch

and remain, remain a field and a barrow

for the morrow a yarrow to seed.