Through Autumn

Only what plans on dying
On its own schedule becomes
Increasingly beautiful
As the inevitable
Comes closer: blushing salmon
Leaping falls, rustling foliage
Flaring color, fallen fruits

Carrying rumors of life
Into caves and compost heaps
Of deaths that have to decay
And wait to be reconsumed
To come into light again.
The rest, we take our chances
On living through the winter,

Are miserly with beauty
And do our decaying now,
An internal smoldering
Familiar to the black bears
And humans who haunt these woods,
Inhaling the scenery
That doesn't belong to us.