Fall's last light
Get caught in the drying petals of a flower past its prime
Now brown and crisping in
The sun's last gasp, preserved forever
In a brown stasis, veins frozen
Like a memory of summer caught
And trapped between the pages of an old book
To be retrieved months later
Crisp and fragile
But smelling faintly of October

The seed buds have matured and gone crispy
Waiting one gust of wind
To tear them from fragile stems
And scatter them across the land
And the leaves, still green, are
Tinged with yellow and curling inward
As if to huddle futilely
Against the inevitability of frost
And the inexorable march of time

But the seeds,
As black and lifeless though they appear
Will wait out the winter, wherever they lay
Patient, still, and silent
And burst to new life
When the world has swung around again
To spring