it's finally autumn
and it feels so good to see your tender leaves plucked prematurely from your branches like they never belonged to begin with
to see your branches ripped off limb, by limb, by limb until you are nothing left but a swollen trunk of rotten bark
i've been waiting across the forest to finally see you go bare
and i hold my axe so tight between my clenched, dirty fingers
but i never near you with it's blade - i never dream of so much as brushing your flank with it's edge because soon it will be autumn
it's autumn now
and as the breeze sweeps away the dead leaves surrounding your roots, i see the life begin to fade from your overarching presence -
once filled with dignity and greed, without mercy and carrying the strings that kept your apples from falling and getting split
but your apples have rotten and the squirrels will pick at them with more elegance than you ever had
it's autumn now
and i find no pleasure in watching you become stripped of what once terrified me
instead i find a solemn feeling in the pit of my stomach
because after watching you shrivel and flake and decompose
it was evident that it wasn't autumn that brought you to become this sad shell of what you once were, for you had been rotten from the very start
and that is not something you fix with regrowth.
