Autumn drops from the spit of summer.

It is brown, well-mealed,
perhaps a little burnt;
its plush resplendencies are gone,
its fruits are split.

That spring, that summer
grimace in a scattering of husks, a wizened apple,
is unbearable;

and at the core:
pipped deaths, abbreviations, futures going hard.

Stones bulk large:

depleted plovers
scrape their smaller partners
into minute curves and ramps.

This junction
when the bird's weight
******* and ties the shale in patterns
is the sea lords' making.

Stones sit on
like rigid eyes:
their stare worn silly
by the sea's corrosive pull,
their grating interplay --
uncanny masochism,

while the human heel
depletes the simple curve of eggs.

A single flame
entices them
to whir against my window.
Once inside
all chaos is let loose.

Like maddened souls
they batter thin partitions.

I can hear them
banging round my room
like noisy kids.

Two are coasting down the flame,
collapsing, fluttering
like mute, sad birds.

You find them dead in lampshades:
unhappy victims of a single impulse:
their greatest escapade
the flame or lamp that was their ruin.