Lone Dying

And in the waning of the year,
Upon a cool foreshortened day,
When beasts both great and small,
Breathe slow and in a hollow lay,
Soon the advent of the solstice,
Sooner razing the fields of hay.

Leaves abandon their verdant shades,
As the trees all hold their breath,
'Til a skeletal and sorrowful lattice,
Seem to compass a world in death.
Still-life holds in the mortal time,
Abel dies, yet hope is still in Seth.

Long after leafy sinews are strewn,
Like the fog burns in the rising sun,
Here, there, deciduous do not disperse,
Stubbornly the autumnal season shun.
Torches burning in the twilight hour,
Dreams and denials of what will be undone.

Encaged by bones of a forest fellowship,
Dust of leaves dancing about the roots,
As light recedes in an ebbing harvest tide,
Straggler timbers shed with the last fruits,
Last to succumb for the fragile privilege,
Of another day denying death's pursuits,

And be
Lone dying.