Autumn Cannibal

The trees blur through the nonexistent plexiglass at one hundred thirty five kilometers per hour. So shapeless, so entangled their huddled bodies are like the compact snow; for stretches it is only a green and brown blanket. A space of rubber coated copper snakes will hiss over clear cut fields and furrows, but then it’s gone; more fires of tress soon consume it. And the sparks of leaves drop to the ground in subtle gentle arching patterns that whisper. Each leaf to be lost, replaced by half a dozen more that overzealously crowd the weather beaten and depleted branch; each leaf to be lost a thousand year memorial passed along by the sweet whisper of the gentle arching leaves as they dance in the wind. The temblantic dance is the telling of a life; as life slowly goes and the heavens approach through the golden rays of the sun, each leaf is epic to the telling of a life. Soon the dance is over, and the final breaths of story are gone into the silent wind, and the leaf is thrown to the ground where it will find the rest. First it is the lonesome, hugging the moist dirt and falling to the invasion of the tiny decomposers with their trembling enthusiasm and carefree aches. Patches turn brown and then fall into rubble and then back into dirt. The nutrient blood that so enriched the leaf in youth is gone and passed away. Another leaf falls in a gentle breeze and lies down beside its only companion; their colors a deep autumn contrast to the brown of the world. More tumble after and, like snow, blanket the ground with a dried frost that shines in the sun the fallen remnants of dreams. Together they go, with their last sighs in the wind and the pitter of falling and forgotten rain. Into the ground, stripped of all love and all care, passing their own lives to the heavy roots of the tree, where once again they have come home. And the trees become sparse and uneven with the melting by suburbia. They fight and grapple to continue along, but are lost in the asphalt jungle. At one hundred thirty five kilometers per hour the concrete gleams under the noisy hiss of the wire snakes.