Bracken snarls as wind attempts a breakthrough.
Pale October sky above the slobber of mud and ice,
crystallized to a web of spittled lace.
Ashes, blown from a furnace, drift and whirl
and fail to settle, filling the air with negative snow.
Separate furies, released from the season’s halfway-
house, find themselves too small, too lacking
in direction to hinder or blacken the dead
white monument of October.