When the Leaves Come Calling

Only when the world is young, do the leaves come calling.
Soft, and warm, and white with the light as they drift through morning.
In the depths of a valley of mist and silence,
Where the corn shifts on at the blackbird's warning.
Dark men of the west in their coats of feathers,
With the paths of autumns, gone-by Septembers;
Things left forgotten in the wild, dim evening,
Brooks overgrown no footstep remembers.
Gray windows and doorways are sinking, dismembered
Like so many plows when they came to be rusted;
Human habitable places have crumbled,
Shot with the filtered brown sun, softly dusted.
"Cooper", "Smith" graves, no faces, no birthdates,
Only the worn stones that move through the falling
Of twilight and wind that blows frost in their grasses
When the world is young, and the leaves come calling.