UNDERPASS
Discarded words,
Crisp once now sodden spinelesss,
Losing colour
Swept down underpasses,
Damp and ammoniac,
An autumn of emotion,
Sullen sludge becoming inchoate wail.
Ripped from mind of one,
Falling into cascade of cliché,
The parcelled soap of millions,
Petty drama deified,
Rigorously abandoned
For the next scene.
Ghosts and leaves,
Both noun and verb
Are we become.
We have fallen into the sere….
Our own phantom menace,
The deeds we did and did not
Haunting the municipal paths,
Ifs and buts in overfilled bins
For late wasps of conscience
To drain some goodness out
And last the long winter
Sheltered in some crook of warmth.
Fire and fallen leaf
Flicker, send up incense,
A bonfire to remembrances
Found and lost,
Found and lost.
—–
A haunting image, subtle, empty, that graced the graceful words of Jessica Ryan’s blog post soveryvery.wordpress.com ‘One’s place’ is the spark for this flurry.
simonhlilly 
I am wondering about “sere….” the definition of dried out makes sense but it is an adjective and seems to need a word to modify. It’s a nice word though – I feel like I’m missing it’s connection – I’ll come back and reread – sometimes fresh eyes help me find things I missed earlier.
It was a, maybe oblique, reference to my favorite soliloquy in MacBeth : My life is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf…” ( perhaps misremembered, from the “Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow… Speech in Act 5). Somehow the current versions say ‘My way of life’…memory, such a fickle thing!
Deeply honored.