Leaf. Grief.

I tried to preserve your haunting
autumn song in laminate
but could not
capture the shape
and curl of your last flame that
flickered down and caught my eye
lying bright new fallen on the earth.
So I removed, carefully, the layers of film
which rendered your form inanimate.
My clumsy interruption of decay stalled the
drying, curling, fading, nothing but the skeleton
will remain, for a time, then reconciled eventually
to the dust in which I will find my own.