Autumn leaves

<Audio>

Dawn's slept breath upon my window lies,
truant in the morning sun,
and sliding wraith-like from my widening eyes,
inveighs of Autumn, dare not go on and on.

Stretching fingers of the early rays,
fair lie upon my face and toes.
Some petals stay, some decompose,
and so it goes, these middling days.

Empty-nested, jewel-webbed,
the condemned in silence mooch around.
Dare not even whisper Fall,
or of weather hard upon the Winter ground.

How can I break this spell,
this toll of fears, that in part
lies embowered around an ancient heart,
dead beat in dread of dumb Winter's knell.

Bad luck? To splinter this mirror isomer of Spring,
to fling, exalted, the golden leaves of a poet's tree.
The year's death, dulled opiate by these days, doth bring
a mahogany of smiles, for Autumn halted, upon a golden dowry.