---

I remember sunlight dancing across her face

Patterns in my mind, gently etched in gold and amber

The warmth of summer riding sweetly on her breath

A warmth recalled only in memories of halcyon yesterdays

Now summer has ended and the warmth is gone

Nothing but a braid on the gallows trees remains to mark her passing

In autumn's wake, sorrow took her as its own

My heart was buried with her there beneath the bleeding oak

She died alone in that mournful glade

No comfort sought nor gained in hateful solitude

She flew on wings as black as seething night

Oh where was I, thou blighted, cursed wood?

Gold and ochre

Behold the tapestry of the fall

There is a beauty

A certain subtle grandeur

In the withering that consumes us all

Among the sightless trunks and boughs

Bare feet upon forgotten soil paths

The leaves blind to her desperate plight

Yet ravens watched from every branch

And witnessed mute her final fall

With solemn caws they called her dead

And flew into the granite sky

Time fades away yet sorrow remains

And as her final song she sang:

'I will fade as night conquers day

I am the ashen eidolon, the deepest shade of grey'

She shuddered with the flaming leaves

Her veins spat golden gouts of burning life

That swirled upward against the pouring rain

Which came down hard as iron coffin nails

It splintered wooden limbs and shattered stone

And pounded on her lifeless, paling corpse

It gave her leave of what she could no longer bear

And forged for her a gilded tomb