We pluck your creations for our vases,
watch as they cower from themselves.
We admire their colours and their forms,
watch as captivity slowly kills them.
We crush them under our heavy weight,
watch as they crack and break.
The survivors are heaped into one large mound,
becoming a child’s plaything.
But they’re left in their pile to rot.
Along comes the machine with its
whirring voice and its rolling feet.
It uses its elephant trunk to pick them up.
They are tortured in the grinding machine.
It’s just doing its job, removing them like waste.
They’re excreted into mulch,
a pile again.
Where do they go?
The fruits of autumn are gone now,
no more of the orange and red blanket
which protected the ground.
The trees are now naked and cold.
Here he comes.