It might have been an aspen, a fairer specimen
than the ghoulish leather hands of oak-fall
that wind-whip a crackling plague on my lawn.

Lime and canary, it bore the bitten beginning
of a bruise, a brownish canker of dissolution.
I froze, calculating this token of mid-autumn,

and with nothing to match its cool fruity smoothness,
when you said, here daddy, I said, thanks buddy.
See you at three for the last soccer game of the year.