The Leaves Are Falling

Here I am saying “The leaves are falling”   

—one of those choruses   

that vie with interminable verses   

to mock hoarders.   

Yeah, we get   

that a palette of winds   

is a pretty thing:   

one blurs the anther, another   

the river splurging on riprap,   

expunging   

phosphates,   

out of the temperature   

differential building   

sculptural fogs   

that promenade   

between shores a glacier   

wedged ajar, a fjord.   

Whatever gives the river   

its seriousness reverses   

in the light   

of those clouds moving   

as if absorbing   

their pomp in advance of it—   

characters   

which untied the painter