The beech leaves are golden now
Still tinged with green
Retaining green at varying rates
In December they will go graybrown
And persist the winter long
But the branches are already hung with icicles
In the form of pine needles
Toppled like bowling pins
By the November rains
The daunting learning curve
The laborious break-in period
So slowly coalesced the vocabulary
So gradually grew the language of mastery
So intricate and deliberate a narrative
That it must be rendered as myth
The emergence of obliquity taxonomy the lore of toxicity
To serve the technologies of sharpening brazing ballistics
The stick for all purposes
The artistry of arrow string and bow
Wood flint bronze steel and sinew
And bring out weight and measure
Self-fulfilling prophecy of dearth
Until at last the human operators
Serve their turn as mechanisms
The women who paint radium on dials
The children who sweep beneath the shuttling loom
Rotary energy converted into lateral
With the force to slay a giant
Or behead a queen