The Austere Poem by Jean Bernard Parr

my windscreen wipers
those black stand-up sticks
that click and flick
the november pages
timekeepers of doom they are
for these unruly leaves
as they lighten grateful trees
then curl, furl gold in gutters
see this truant horde scamper
down the street, wind bleak
skirmish of last-dance
delinquent leaves, now, under
pale pond-skimming sun
the time has come
time for a more ordered troop
the time now is for
the sharp, dark and stand-up twigs