the acorns tumble, the dried leaves slip slowly sideways,
each a slow motion death, almost balletic, or acrobatic,
the decedents, like bodies on the Field of Hastings, their
skeletons to be consumed by a history ******* earthy soil

this more than any thing, as much as covid deaths of known
older brothers more than the messages on the answering
machine from robotic nurses and truly concerned doctors,
impatiently waiting to discuss test results with still alive patients

four lines in each stanza was unplanned like sets of decades,
that the man’s life can be retrospectively be divisibly assayed,
each titled, consistent of games and sets, until the last match
not on center court, is finale tie-broken, the faults too numerous

he writes this unshaken, but stirred, for the hours spent observing,
of each trajectory of every fallen leaf is distinctly connected to losses,
oh! how the losses multiplied; loves, children, unspoken words of
affection and forgiveness, mounted, moats, barriers to fulfillment,

a lawn of dead shriveled things, mounting, dear mother of god, all

préludes that hasten(ed) the shedding of lives every August!