Brown

Looking at an assortment

Of living ponderosas

And dead, of oaks bare of leaves

And oaks still copiously

Marcescent, some holding up

Acorns, there’s a lot of brown

To contemplate, the golden

And crimson fall receding,

Grey November not here yet.

There was a poem that opened

With the image, a last barn,

Dark as a plug of chewing

Tobacco. It comes to mind.

Barn dark, chewing tobacco

Dark, and disintegrating

Dirt dark brown all come to mind.

Mind. The parasite warehouse,

Gall dark with words for tint shades,

It squirms around in the skull,

Like a worm in an acorn

On a collapsing barn floor

Where the trees are returning

In that weird way the woods have

Of creeping in when they can.

Can acorns even have worms?

The worm of the mind ponders

Inside a small acorn skull.