With a howl, October’s winds shear the fiery hosts
of their yellows and reds to leave the branches bare.
Then the orphaned leaves are stained, like little brown ghosts,
on the sidewalk before they’re raised into the air
again. A resurrecting tempest—they fall up
and up, as if magnetized to an iron sky.
Souls too ascend, like the warping steam of my cup,
with Autumn’s hope: to rise on conjured winds and fly.
