MIME: A PROROGUED AUTUMN

MIME: A PROROGUED AUTUMN

(After Irene)

It would be a murky deluge in reverse,
should these leaves find themselves
rampaging back to quivering branches,
like snarling currents breaking through
porous earth to reclaim what is theirs. 

But this magical return to shorn foliages
would be a gentler dance with the wind,
quite unlike the clutch of moss and mud
that has turned the hillsides into brackish
blankets of debris and ruptured places. 

A mime of frolicking birds prepping up
for a sullen fall robbed of the rain of leaves?
Mirroring the river’s angry repossession
of the land, the large flock of small birds
skitter through the trees like fluttering 

leaves returning to trembling branches
that are perhaps askance at playing hosts
once again to fallen comrades that leave
when the leaving is easy, when the dying
is de rigueur, when goodbyes are left unsaid. 

—Albert B. Casuga
08-31-11

Prompt: A large flock of small birds in the trees at the edge of the woods, hovering, diving, fluttering up like brown leaves returning to the tree. --- Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 08-31-11