As far as I can see, the trees brown beneath fall’s frost.
Mother’s skin is marred by age spots as death’s knell calls frost.
Forests once ripe with scarlet stars sicken, the air burns.
Once woods were purifying, now maples spurn the foul frost.
Bare branches rake a taciturn sky in coughing mist.
A tuberculin smog claims all in appalling frost.
Mother dear, earth-mother mine, rise-up, support mankind.
Forgive your children’s excesses, breathe … forestall frost.
Deborah cries for the loss of fair autumn’s pallet
Purple Sweetgum’s burnt crisp, ginger brown in caul of frost.
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Photo by Aaron Mello on Unsplash
