On a small cold autumn day,
When trees grow old and decay,
I can only see one thing,
Death remains in the air.

Malovent green hues,
Shrivel up, and die,
Leaves of past beauty lay down,
Still to lie.

Blizzards of colors,
Swirl, and unfurl,
Whirlwinds of life dance, and curl,
But no sooner than not,
They settle, heaps of brown,
In a morbid ode,
an Ode of the down.

The tree lay bare,
Stripped of their pride,
Now all empty,
With an absence of life,
Their personalities strewn on the floor,
Lacking strife.

Thought the masses,
Dull, and colorless,
I stride,
Only to find,
A leaf, one that caught my eye,
One of a kind.

Amazed, I stare down
At my malovent find,
And I glance down at the colors,
That let life in death unwind.

A red flash,
Of glittering blood hue,
And the leaf looks alive
From its core,
Although life had left it long before.
As I stare over, this delicate find,
I ponder,
How could nature be so kind?
How could nature allow a single leaf to live on,
After it’s life, was long gone.

The beauty arises,
And it flashed through my eyes,
The leaf gives me pleasure,
Even as it dies.

I put the leaf back,
Back to rest,
To where it belonged,
And I saw,
The beauty of death,
As life lives on,
no matter the cost,
and I saw it in the leaf,
moments before it was enveloped by frost.