ROUGH SCRIPTURE

I am bending the leaves of autumn to my liking. I am a dunce knitting them together at some
arts 'n' crafts camp. I'll fold their stricken
golds and reds into tin cups to feed the needy,
I will create from them a whole diorama
of the city's populace holding hands, and wait, numbly smiling for someone's approval.

I will sit there and still hear the leaves falling,
stitching their piecemeal armor to the highway,
while tires sluice through a late rain outside. I will see headlights fall through the front gates,
send their caustic gaze my way, until the engine
shuts off, ticks over: anotherfamily member stopping by to rattle my cage.

Oh, I know they have their hopes: that I will grow
to be an adult, driving on a highway past fifty
anonymous front gates just like this one and not think another thing, that the leaves will fall to words
like "Bourbon" and "Automatic Traction," that I will have one damn pop-song so stuck
in my head I couldn't get rid of it even if you shot me.
But I want to stay as stupid as I am right now.

Because each leaf that falls meets the soil,
and you know what happens then, don't you? I was born of a few leaves falling and I count them,
gathering them up into a rough scripture that’ll do
no good, because the last line always ends with,
"Forget."