Autumnal Math Poem by Warren Falcon

The ground assumes its portent.
The good of the season remains in what is left behind.
It takes what lays down or is laid down upon it.
You'd think it a kind of king of accountants.
You'd sink down an addition of arithmetics,
heartbeats, breaths, footings found and lost,
all the unintended landings of a life.

You'd think it wouldn't stop.
You'd sink down even wide awake in this season.
Such sinking pretends its endings in countless
geometries of folding life down or over
and under sundering fractions apart,
forgetting theorems, all but the final one.
The rest can change or pretend to.

Admit you are no good at numbers.
Admit you can only count to a certain sum,
or down to it. Reverse your life if you want to,
wind it down with a memory. Beef up the end.
Noble or not, you can fake it.
Planning is what counts for indemnity.
You can make it seem to make sense.
You can try a new line on every stranger you meet.
You've only begun to juggle Euclid anew under
white lids painted shut with mortician's abacus.

You know a new counting accounting for fainter signs,
new ground to flick numbers between your teeth.
What's left behind is now wrong.
The good of it is what belongs to the
laying down of lines about what you've
finally done. Recounting your old formulas
gives some lingering warm to nerves on edge.

No hedging now.
The ground assumes its importance.
The season rattles all our leaving
in its cupped hand.