Last Leaves

LAST LEAVES Shriveled and dried and near death The leaves depart the branches and spin to the ground, In the the vortices of the autumn chills, to be swirled And swept into piles ignominious In shallow hollows windless Of the bare garden, girding itself for the loneliness of winter. An old man sits huddled on the bench, Face pinched with the cold, Smoothing and re-smoothing a photo Of a lost wife who took her last leave At the end of summer, departing ignominiously, Fainting and injuring her head in the street : And he prepares himself for the winter of his loneliness.