AUTUMN LEAVES

AUTUMN LEAVES Leaves, all as unfulfilled summer hopes, finally fall As they do, in their own kind of golden splendour With Autumn offering them welcoming sympathy They know with much regret, their time has come To lay silently among many others of a similar fate But glad they have fulfilled such a crucial function Looking back up at the tree’s black bare branches Certain that new progeny will emerge next Spring With no way now left for them to offer up advice Yet assured that Nature has the keys to pass it on The secret, to capture and transform the sunlight