autumn

to Homan

You have invited me to die
by ripe entertainments, so I
make a horse’s head
of fungus-crusted stump
and gaze with dead eyes
of a dog where a great
branch broke from the tree.
I count patches of lichen,
enumerate their missing tints.
Each bit of lined decay
must be imagined, eye
made surfeit with its true
entangling: dead log,
sinuous vine, thorn and bract.
Autumn. Gone is syntax.