Carbon Leaves (Mind Autumn)

   When spring comes violent from the chimneys

Of winter locker, the maids, honey blonde

Chords of Irish skein, sterilize the sanitariums

Until the chemicals make all blind, I tell—

   The sickly hounds and wolves, from stick and city,

untrimmed filthies and frothing cages of  brittle bone,

Shake in circles from the cold,

                                                and the washing rain

Under the newly sprouted leave fingers of trees—

For the past, the carbon leaves of color die to wind,

                                                vain memories,

Wilt and succumb to the hungry mouth of soil

                                                Or sink in sea.

The top side of leaf sees the sky,

The bottom sees the canines shake—

In the rain,

By the cold,

(when all shake their heads

            In fear disguised for sympathy)

the belly of the leaf sees the

                                    Heavens

And the sunned topside sees the

                                    Beasts—

   The sanitarium is a church of suckling and

Vivid impulse, prostrate in

Hay, through worn and

Wooden pews

            With thousands kneeling in prayer

            With the wind chiming sins escaping

            from tops of the canines’ heads howling—

   To the confessional with the maids

To the confessional with the priest

To the confessional flooded with rain

And Lilly pads of carbon leaves

   At the confessional door,

With the confessional door opened,

The sanitarium becomes

                                    beautiful and filthy

In the escaping flow of maiden, beast, and

   Many carbon leaf.