I wrote this poem many years ago, when my children were in elementary school. Vermont's autumnal season is a mystical time, harkening a wonderful passage from the book The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: “There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.”
Orange
are my boys
in the autumn of Vermont
where the growling hair grows
in the sun
and shadow
like apricot veins
preciously
ripe
unlike
flecks of death
swarming us
enormously
are the piles
of maple leaves