Gathering Leaves

November PAD challenge, day 20.  Write a "gathering" poem.

in brittle circles they dance, their
green gowns changed for brown, wrinkled
past redemption, their dry chattering

echoes, then fades.  they have escaped
the rake, the staid brown bags
marked over with text, fat barrels

of summer-canopy crumpled, crammed,
one atop another, so different from
their leafy springing, clear green, graceful

in the air, smooth to the touch,
without blemish, before the assaults
of insects, the buffeting of wind

and rain; they whispered, always,
amongst themselves, the taffeta-rustle
from the wind a great rushing, peppered

with birdsong, less lucky, the others, compressed now, in
stolid brown bags, an army of them
silent, curbside