Untended

Thoughts like fallen leaves,

dried up and skittering
over concrete and slumbering brown earth,

crackling
with chitinous distinction
under foot,

amassing
into great whooshing piles,
stirred by winds and ardent striding

(deeper meanings
hinted at within
insistent susurrus),

accumulate
round tree trunks
and then,

untended,
trodden,
and rained upon,
become

a glistening wet chrysalis?

-Or-

wet brown sludge
to be scraped off the lawn
like excrement from the bottom of shoe.

You decide.