Pick-Up-Sticks Poem by Julie Bond

The butterflies should find another haunt.
Their favorite plant out in the garden died
but we took it for winter's grey and gaunt
inertia, passing with the season's tide.

The garden's full of bones, too late to mourn
a maple's passing, who can say what day
said farewell once the leaves were all windshorn
and piled so tidily? There's no decay

to notice, no wood-borers pushing dust
onto the mulch, just snap-twigs breaking brown
and falling, as the sere and wingless must,
like spilikins that lie where they're thrown down.