Red Autumn Poem by Patrick O'Reilly

The rust tin leaves
Crush 'neath my feet
The sky is already turning a dark, dusky blue
And filling with a forest's worth of chimney smoke.

I have a lover's worth of paper in the pocket.

Admire the new foreign trees,
Bloody-painted patches
Stretching to the cold sun,
Growing silently vacant and bare.
The leaves fall one by one
The year's tears at growing old

Smile, this season,
It is your golden age.