Spare no lament for the maple leaves
     that hail their impending fall
with blazing gold and scarlet concerts
     bright as Christmas brass in marble halls.

How bold their radiant hymns resound -
     mute to the sweatered ones below
whose treble scraping rakes -
     raise smoldering pyres of the fallen.

Steamy plumes from cocoa mugs
     blend with burning oak and maple wisps
as rakers chant their own sweet airs,
     “The colors surprised this year,
didn’t think we’d had the rain.”

So spare no lament for the maple leaves
     whose jubilant anthems,
raised beneath the harvest moon,
     herald their fall with rainbow alleluias.

*November, 2006