Extinction

My thoughts are red leaves blown and whirled away
Into the gulfs of silence—
They were so beautiful until the wind
Bruised them and tossed them and wrenched them adrift from life.

Now they are dead,
And drifting aimlessly over a dying world
They will never come back to me, these phantoms of thought;
Their last red gleam of life will flicker out
In the glooms of space that lie between world and world.

—M.P.P.