Autumn oughta end when the leaves fall.
When flurries of amber depress into a damp carpet unpleasant under your feet.
Nature is a drag when it stalls.
His hollow bounty overflows most of all:
Limbs, dirty shades of gold and small crawlies from beneath.
Autumn oughta end when the leaves fall.
The forest, now naked and bare, reveals him frail
and surrounded by weeds, crabgrass and trash left by teens being indiscreet.
Nature is a drag when it stalls.
He wasn’t young, but he coulda been so tall.
A long way from the friendly, fertile forest he resides: incomplete.
Autumn oughta end when the leaves fall.
He sags solemnly in silence as the seasons forestall.
Winter waits patiently to pity the deserted with defeat.
Nature is a drag when it stalls.
He wasn’t even visible, after all.
No one was around to hear a fallin’ tree’s warning call.
Autumn oughta end when the leaves fall;
Nature simply lets us stall.
Note: This poem is a villanelle, a form characterized by repetition and circuity. Lines and rhymes from the first stanza are repeated throughout, very specifically, in this 19-line poem.