The Final Cause

By the time the fever set in, The leaves had already turned, Turned that is, into the colors, Already there beforehand. — The bursting verdant stickiness, Of nipple spring, June’s coy leafy gaze, The muscular lust of summer grazing, When Burgundy picnics, Turn white, thick and milky firm, The multiples upon multiples, Of thunderous green forest froth, Dancing, Swaying, Anticipating, Feeling, The coming moves of, Autumns haze and maze of chrome, Hips at midnight still moving in trance, Slowly, grinding, To a halt, Resting still, For a moment, Alive but on edge, As a reaper descends, With the grey, hollow rapture, Of her sweeping blade, Swooshing, Swoosh, -ing, The harvest begins, In fields, Where blonde, golden children, Run from the crashing rye, Towards a precipice, Where doom d r o p s Like falling butterflies The smokey wasteland of September, Glowing orange skies, Rumbling grey rattling clouds, That shake, By sheer size and proportion of will, The trees and bees below, To let go, Of holding on, Of staying, Of remaining put, At home, In the imaginary world, Where the colors of the blind, Make life, So wonderfully, Fleeting. The recycling begins, Darkness nears, Shadows whisper, Flowers flee, Downwards sinking, Like worms, Into the cold sea of terrestrial dreams. The earth, With yawning yellow lungs, Inhales the fast fading fumes, Of summers rainbow intoxication. Like snow flake showers, All begins, To Fallin g to the ground, Down, To, Fallin g to the ground, Down. Where, The brown mulcher, Of green, Misty mountains, Of purple, Windswept moors, Of fiddleheads, In prayer, Of cobwebs, In silence, Of seas, sunshine, Glaciers and tundra prairies, Of golden dawn sunsets, Desert storms and tectonic plates, Of massive scope, All are tenderly received, With waiting grace, By mother earth, Who tucks, The fading brittle fragments, Under the covers, Of infinite nonchalance. That which once smiled at the sun, Now sleep, s — The final cause, Of death, Was not in the facts, Surrounding the circumstances, Which led to the man, Actually dying, Though one can hardly underestimate, Nor discount, The peripheral role, The cancer, Played. The final cause, Of death, Was indeed, At birth. Way before the fever set in.