For nothing now can ever
come to any good -
Words I lifted off the page,
popped in my mouth and
swished around til it all
made sense to me.

That line, by itself,
hanging at the end of
the stanza, now hanging
off the tip of my twisted tongue.
It touched me somehow, someplace,
by way of some terrible twist of fate.

W.H. Auden, it is
the end of autumn and I
ask you how you handle death.
For, though I write, a poem
does not suffice. Not me.
I am, by these falling leaves,
reminded of their faces and
when they touch the ground
I look down and weep.